Sinking Sand
by Quarterdeck
Summary: A story about faith and friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This story was a long time in coming, from its first tentative beginnings in early April 2007, through the editing/encouragement process in June, to its ultimate, if undeserved, fate as an item for the Star for Brian Auction in November. My most humble and heartfelt thanks go to L. M. Lewis and Owlcroft, whose encouragement, enthusiasm, invaluable editing, and surefire suggestions ensured that this story would finally reach a finished state; a special thanks goes to L. M. for going way beyond the second mile to prep it and make it available to the auction participants. I also want to thank the wonderful, trusting readers who purchased the rights to it, sight unseen; I do so hope that you feel you received your money's worth. Most of all, I would like to thank the committed, awe-inspiring movers and shakers of the Star for Brian campaign, who gave nearly everything they had to make sure that the late Brian Keith received the recognition he so truly deserved. Amy, Cheri, L.M., and Lynn, this one is most gratefully dedicated to you.

**SINKING SAND**

By Quarterdeck

Chapter 1

The man was cold, sitting there on the front steps of his house, his arms wrapped tightly across his stomach, his face as bleak as the ominous mass of dark clouds overhead that had already swallowed the sun well before its time. A single tiny droplet of water fell directly onto his head, unerringly targeting the unprotected surface of his much-despised bald spot, before sliding lazily into the surrounding white hair. That droplet was followed by another, and another, and yet another, until he was enveloped in a light sprinkling rain that turned the landscape before him into a dull dismal gray, matching both his mood and his complexion. His lightweight pullover began to cling to his body, and the chill dampness set his teeth to chattering.

Yet he remained where he was, staring past the fountain and down the driveway, where the faint glow of headlights on the Pacific Coast Highway could be seen. These were soon echoed by the security lights along the drive that flickered on one by one in the dusk, reflecting wetly against the rain-slicked concrete, highlighting the meandering waves of drizzle that drifted softly in the fitful breeze. Still the man sat on as the dusk turned to darkness, the drizzle turning into a steady downpour, the raindrops puddling in the depressions of the stones that surrounded him. Despite the rain, he had no real desire to go into the house, as the phone call which would have been his only reason for doing so had already come, much earlier than the ones last night and the night before.

He became vaguely aware of a rivulet of rainwater that had made its determined way down his forehead, balancing delicately along the bridge of his nose before coming to a dramatically dripping conclusion at its very tip end, and he knew that he was courting a disaster he could ill afford in remaining outside in this kind of weather. But still he sat, smiling slightly as he played back in his head that conversation of an hour ago...

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"Oh, wow, Judge, you shoulda been here. Did you watch it? Yeah, okay, so Elliot had the pole, and yeah, he led a lot of the race and won the thing. But Bodine had a real chance to do it again, you know? He won it last year on gas mileage, but this year he just couldn't pull it off. You know, I woulda done the same thing, 'cause coming in second just don't count for nothing at the Daytona 500. And boy, did those boys ever go fast! I've never seen anything like it! Gosh, how I wish I could do Daytona. Just one time before I hang up the ol' helmet for good." The wistfulness of those last two sentences could not hide the excitement that was so apparent in the speaker's voice, even as yelled from a Daytona Beach payphone over the noise of enthusiastic cheering mixed in with a lusty chorus of rebel yells – Awesome Bill from Dawsonville had clearly been a popular winner. "Look, Hardcastle, me and E.J. are getting together with some of our old buddies tonight, and we're gonna get away from all the rednecks and celebrate how the Yankee almost won again; that's why I'm calling so early. How ya doin'?"

Hardcastle narrowed his eyes at the last question, so carelessly tacked onto all that effusive commentary, and he wondered worriedly just how much his friend had managed to glean from their previous conversations. He strove to keep his voice normal. "I'm fine, McCormick. Everything's fine here."

There was a brief silence, at least from McCormick; the celebration around him was still going great guns. Hardcastle waited patiently, only to hear the kid say, in a slightly lower, puzzled voice, "You sure about that?"

Hardcastle felt a wave of panic wash over him; apparently the difference between his and McCormick's ideas of how he normally sounded were miles apart. It occurred to him that a touch of verisimilitude might be in order, so he said in a slightly tentative tone, "Well, maybe everything's not all _that_ fine … I, uh, I kinda whopped off more than I'd planned of that new hybrid tea."

"The new hybrid? Judge, you paid almost fifty bucks for that rose. Just how much did you whop off?"

"Well … let's just say that we have a really good chance of finding out just what the root stock on that thing looked like."

"_Ju-udge _…" McCormick's pained wince from across the miles was as plain as if he'd been standing right there in the den. "Look, just stay away from the roses until I get back, okay? And yeah, I know, it was you that showed me how to prune 'em to begin with, but it looks like you might've lost your golden touch, if you get my drift. Uh, wait a minute..." There was a garbled mutter in the background, followed by a whispered conversation that was unintelligible on Hardcastle's end, probably due to McCormick's hand being placed firmly across the payphone receiver.

As he waited as instructed, Hardcastle congratulated himself on his very successful diversion. The best part was that he'd actually managed to tell the truth without giving away any of the circumstances – it was while he'd been trimming the roses Friday morning that the throbbing ache and sharp twinges he'd been experiencing for weeks had decided to turn into a sudden, intense, stabbing pain. The loppers had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Suddenly McCormick's voice blared in his ear once more. "Look, I gotta run. Traffic's thinned out, and we'll never get a table if we don't get out of here. I'll call you tomorrow night."

"You do that. Just remember to come home on Wednesday, okay?"

Even Hardcastle could hear the plaintive note in that last question, but he must have been a little more successful in the normality department this time, judging by the laugh that accompanied McCormick's reply. "Yeah, Judge, sure, like I'd forget the lower forty that still needs to be mowed. I'll see ya Wednesday. 'Bye. Hey!" shouted McCormick's voice suddenly from the receiver, as Hardcastle moved to hang up the phone. "You still there? I forgot to tell you, I gotcha a souvenir. A cap."

"You did, huh?" answered Hardcastle, even the weariness and pain so evident in his faded blue eyes unable to erase the smile on his face. "What kind of cap?"

"An Earnhardt cap, of course," McCormick replied, the grin apparent in his voice even over a less than optimal telephone connection. "It's black, and it's got Dale's signature embroidered on it, and the Monte Carlo, and the number '3' and everything." Even with the background noise that seemed to rise a decibel with every passing second, his chuckle came through loud and clear. "I sure understand why you like the guy, Judge. You're perfect for each other. You run roughshod over anything that gets in your way, but when it's all over, even the people who hate you kinda like you too, even if they won't admit it. You two really are a couple of old Ironheads." And with that comment, he yelled a final "'Bye!" followed by a definitive click and a buzzing dial tone.

Hardcastle sat there for a moment, holding the receiver in his hand, the smile lingering on his lips before a sudden twinge – well, something a little more than a twinge – turned his smile into a grimace. He swallowed hard, holding tight to the arm of his chair, then hung up the phone and slowly left his desk to head up the steps to the hallway and the front door. Ever since Mark McCormick's departure on Thursday night, the walls of the house – even those of his beloved den – had begun to close in on him, and with this new facet of his existence, this constant companion that had moved uninvited into his life, the idea of anything at all closing him in had begun to seem both much too frightening – and much too real.

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And so now here he was, lonely and forlorn, sitting in the rain like the idiot he was, the pain in his gut dulled slightly to its normal slow throb, when he could have been with McCormick in Florida, listening in amused silence as the kid and his old friends relived the adventures of their youth, far away from the dark and morbid thoughts that had plagued him lately. That, in fact, had been the plan when he had bought the Daytona 500 tickets last autumn, as a surprise Christmas gift for McCormick.

Hardcastle had been excited himself then at the prospect of the two of them gallivanting off to see in person the high banks of Daytona Speedway, using the passes that a well-connected friend of his had promised to procure for him prior to Speedweeks, gaining entrance to that vast and mysterious garage area to which only the most fortunate were ever allowed access. That sort of thing was meat and drink to McCormick, and Hardcastle had looked forward to watching his friend reveling in all the excitement and pageantry of the Great American Race.

But as the autumn had worn on into the early part of winter, Hardcastle had found himself wearing a little more than usual. And in his weariness he had uncharacteristically begun to debate the wisdom of that plan, wondering just how McCormick could enjoy something that might have been his own life by now, while walking beside the man who was partly responsible for making it all so impossible.

The debate was finally settled on Christmas morning, when he had presented both tickets to McCormick and told him to invite a friend, any friend – male or female – and when the time came, he, Hardcastle, would foot the bill for their plane tickets to Florida, as well as their accommodations _and_ the rental car fare. McCormick had been ecstatic when he had spilled the contents of the ribbon-tied envelope into his hand, his face shining from his cross-legged position beside the cheerfully twinkling tree, and upon hearing the judge's unusually generous offer, his eyes had widened almost to the size of saucers.

But then, to Hardcastle's dismay, he had cast a searching look at his mentor and said slowly, "I think _you_ oughta go with me, Judge." McCormick lowered his voice coaxingly. "Just think, Hardcase, February in Florida. Mild temps, sandy beaches, pretty girls, lots of cold beer and shrimp and crabs and oysters, and all those roaring engines." He grinned. "C'mon, Kemosabe, we'll have a blast."

"Aw, McCormick," Hardcastle had replied gruffly, a little unnerved that McCormick had gone and proposed the very same plan that he had already determinedly jettisoned. "You've been tied to me hand and foot for over three years now. Don't ya think Tonto deserves a little time off to hang out with the other Indian braves, without the Masked Man bein' underfoot all the time?"

That question had earned him a strange stare, as McCormick's grin faded to a concerned frown, the tickets in his hand momentarily forgotten. "You wouldn't be underfoot, Judge, you're way past the 'leaner' stage by now. You'd have fun, honest you would." He uncrossed his legs and sat back on his heels, a mulish look about his mouth. "Look, Judge, you said I could invite anyone. Well, I'm inviting _you_."

There was no doubt as to the sincerity of the invitation, and Hardcastle had been sorely tempted, but he had made up his mind, at no small sacrifice, and that, in essence, was that. Glancing up, his eyes had met McCormick's. "Kiddo, I appreciate that. I really do. But don't you see, that's kinda part of my present to you – a chance to get together with guys your own age, who've been the same places you've been, and done the same things you've done."

McCormick had just stared at Hardcastle in confusion. Hardcastle had sighed and rubbed one temple tiredly, knowing what he wanted to say and but not too sure just how to say it. Finally, in typical Hardcastle fashion, he had just forged on ahead and hoped for the best. "It's sort of a chance for you to be just plain Mark McCormick, see? Not McCormick the Ex-con, or McCormick the Yard Guy, or McCormick the Fast Gun, or even McCormick the Law Student. Look on it as an opportunity for you to remember who you were before some nitwit named Melinda Marshall kicked you in the gut, and some stupid jury of your peers tossed you in the slammer, and some hardass named Milton C. Hardcastle turned the key and tossed it away."

McCormick's stare had gone from confused to astonished to a barely dawning anger, all in the space of a few seconds. "Is that what this is supposed to be, Judge?" McCormick had asked evenly, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Some sort of compensation for '_time_ well spent'?"

"_No!_" Hardcastle had answered forcefully, his own eyes squinting in pained surprise. "It's just a Christmas present, dammit, and if you don't like it, I'll take the tickets back and buy you a tie and some socks."

McCormick's face had cleared as quickly as it had clouded, and he had laughed, clutching his precious tickets tightly in his fist. "Don't you touch these things, Hardcase. I wouldn't give 'em up for all the socks and ties in the world." His laughter faded to a pensive smile as he continued, "Not even a tie that says, 'Welcome to Atlantic City.'"

Hardcastle had flinched at this wistful reference to McCormick's wayward father, although the words contained not a hint of bitterness. Thankfully, there had at least been a Christmas card this year, along with a twenty-dollar bill and a note to 'have some Christmas cheer on me' – a gesture that would have been much less than adequate in a normal father, but showed definite signs of improvement in the elusive and less-than-reliable Sonny Daye.

Before the judge could say anything in reply, McCormick had continued, "Okay, if you don't want to go, you don't want to go. I can understand that. But let the reason you don't go be because you don't _want _to go, not because you think you don't belong anywhere near anything that has to do with my Life Before Prison. 'Cause let me tell you something, Judge, it's finally sinking in that if I'd had you around in my 'life before prison', there wouldn't have been a _need_ for a 'life after prison'."

Embarrassed and touched by McCormick's words, Hardcastle didn't know what to say, and he wondered if McCormick had any idea just how close he had come to the truth about his motivations for staying home. Finally, he had leaned forward and said gruffly, "Tell you what, sport. You take those tickets – not for time served, or services rendered, or because of the guilty conscience I _don't_ have, but because you're my friend, and I think you deserve 'em. And when you get to be a big-shot lawyer, with a beautiful wife and a big house and a fancy car that makes the Coyote look like a motor scooter, you can buy me some for the same reason. Sound like a deal?"

"Sounds like a deal, Judge," McCormick had answered with a smile, but as he turned to reach across to the far side of the tree for his gift to the judge, Hardcastle had barely caught his muttered, "I still wish you'd change your mind."

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And now Hardcastle wished he _had_ gone with him, only as it turned out, it would never have worked anyway. There was no doubt now that Hardcastle's presence would only have caused problems, even if they were not exactly the problems he had envisioned in the beginning, and all Hardcastle really wanted was for McCormick to have a good, problem-free time.

At least McCormick had E.J. with him: E.J. Corlette, former competitor, deposed Trans-Am champ, and McCormick's choice of companion in lieu of Hardcastle; the judge knew that with E.J. and his connections, McCormick was now enjoying the best of all possible racing worlds. Besides, Hardcastle thought in morbid whimsy as he reflected on his latest McCormickless activities, if he was in Florida, how could he have fulfilled his new lot in life as California's Number One Eulogy Deliverer?

Before he could set off after that particular line of thought, he was startled by the stoop light blinking into sudden brightness behind him, prompted by the photocell sensor he and McCormick had installed just a few weeks before. Belatedly acknowledging the intensity of the rain and his own waterlogged condition, he reluctantly stood up, rising with the slow deliberation of a man much older than his sixty-something years.

Hardcastle stood for a minute, staring one last time down the drive, as though his melancholy gaze could somehow summon up the person he most wanted to see. Then he turned and entered the house, careful to close the glass-paned door against the encroaching dampness, but for some reason neglecting to lock it or set the alarm – wishful thinking indeed.

As he crossed to the double doors to his right, he could feel the pain in his lower abdomen, the newfound bane of his existence, swelling with each agonized step, so that by the time he had managed to descend down the short stairway leading into the den, he was forced to sit right down on the top step, his cheek resting against the cool wrought iron of the banister. Angry tears appeared at the corners of his eyes as he splayed his hand hard against his belly in a futile attempt to check the severe cramping that seemed to increase with every painfully drawn breath.

Never in his life had he experienced pain like this. Even when he'd been shot in the chest, the pain had soon been masked by his semi-conscious state. But now he was wide awake, and very much aware of each excruciating wave as it rose and fell, seemingly in time with his heartbeat. Soon he found himself doubled over, his head almost touching the step as he fought with this implacable enemy, and deep within him was an obscure desire for some means of oblivion, even to the point of death – _anything_ to give him relief from this unrelenting torment.

He sat crouched over for a long time; for how long, he had no idea, as he never thought to check his watch, all his energy being concentrated on keeping the anguish at bay. He had finally managed to sit up, holding tightly to the stair rail and staring longingly at his desk chair, when the telephone began to ring. With a dreadful sense of déjà vu, he closed his eyes, waiting for the answering machine to click on. But before the machine could begin to spin out its message of greeting, another voice spoke over his own carefully recorded speech, a feminine voice that shook with emotion and age, speaking with an urgency that told its hearer that here were no tidings of joy, but news once again of the very worst sort, as had seemed his never-ending lot for the past two weeks.

"Milt? Milt, are you there? Oh, _Milt_ ..."

Slowly, slowly, Hardcastle began to rise, pulling himself up by the banister. Then, crossing to his desk, one hand holding to the back of a chair for support, he switched off the answering machine and reached for the receiver, saying with a gruff tightness into its mouthpiece, "Yeah, Stella, I'm right here ..."

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After hanging up the phone, Hardcastle sank heavily into his chair, ignoring the inevitably painful flare-up the movement caused, and stared out the rain-streaked window, his saturated shirt sticking uncomfortably to his back. Yet _another_ eulogy to deliver, the third one in less than two weeks, the earlier eulogies acting as bookends to still another funeral, where all he had been required to do was stand there at the graveside, trying not to fidget as he thought sadly of the old days when at least a guy had a hat to hold so as to keep his hands busy.

Swiveling around to face his desk, he opened a folder that lay across the blotter and studied the clippings contained there, flipping through them one by one; he supposed it must be a real sign of old age when a man began to keep his friends' obituaries for posterity. At least he could console himself with the knowledge that all those other guys had been well on their way to becoming decently decrepit before heading to the Happy Hunting Ground.

At that last thought, Hardcastle was irresistibly reminded of one of the recently departed as he lay in regal state, surrounded by the most ornate of floral tributes, with his favorite muzzleloader placed tenderly beneath his crossed hands. Even in his depression, Hardcastle could not restrain a grin at the reflection that if there had been some way to get that prized twelve-point rack stuffed into that coffin without breaking it into pieces, no doubt Harry would have gone to his final resting place with that, too.

But the levity vanished as quickly as it came, as Hardcastle considered the latest victim in his string of Close Friends Gone South. George Mangell ... hell, poor old George hadn't even seen his sixtieth birthday yet, and here he was downed by a heart attack. Never married, shy, awkward, but a really good guy when you got to know him, and Hardcastle had learned to know him very well indeed during their shared twenty years as superior court judge and public defender. An unlikely PD was George Mangell, but one of the best, fighting passionately for the uncertain futures of his indigent – and frequently guilty – clients. Sometimes Hardcastle wondered what might have happened if McCormick had been fortunate enough to draw George as his defense attorney, and he inevitably found that he preferred not to dwell on that worst case – or best case, depending on how you looked at it – scenario.

Hardcastle closed the folder and tried to make his tired brain work. He knew he should go ahead and drive to San Francisco; George's mother was well past eighty, and he felt he should at least _try_ to provide some sort of moral support. The traffic shouldn't be too bad on such a wet Sunday night, but he just didn't feel like driving that far in the rain – actually, he didn't feel like driving, period – and besides, the kid might call. Why he thought that might happen, he had no idea; McCormick had practically promised him the next check-in would be Monday night at the earliest, but for some reason he felt it would happen. More wishful thinking, he thought to himself acidly, but the feeling persisted, keeping company with the ever-present pain that seemed determined to leave him no peace.

Hardcastle leaned back in his chair and stared unseeingly across the room, his mind turned uncharacteristically inward, as he thought about what he could, or should, have done differently. Although he had been feeling tired and out of sorts for several months, he had only felt really ill for the last few days – well, actually more like the last few weeks. Plaguing him as an intermittent, steadily worsening stomachache, the dull throb had progressed without warning to a sharper, more debilitating cramping as he had worked out in the yard this past Friday.

From that point on, the pain was always present, sometimes deepening without warning to an almost paralyzing agony, so that he could do nothing but wait helplessly, as he had done tonight, until the severity had gradually subsided once more to a barely tolerable dullness. And so it went, a constant rollercoaster of intense pain and dull throbbing, and along with the pain sometimes came a fever and an overwhelming weariness. At least tonight there had been none of the nausea that had rendered earlier attacks almost unbearable.

What had made the whole thing even worse was that excessive movement seemed to make the pain that much more severe, so that climbing the stairs to his room had become an ordeal to be avoided. For the last two nights, he had taken to sleeping on the sofa, his entire world now having shrunk to the den, the hall bathroom, and the kitchen, and as he rarely ventured far past even the confines of the den's paneled walls, his sojourn on the stoop this evening had been a marked departure from what had now become his new normality.

Still, he gave thanks every night that on Wednesday, while he was gone to the bank to arrange for funds to finance the Daytona excursion, McCormick had come in from school and washed the contents of both their laundry hampers, leaving the judge's freshly dried clothing and linen neatly folded in a basket on the kitchen table. That basket, so conveniently located for his current purposes, now served Hardcastle as both linen closet and dresser, although he had begun to worry about what he would do once the basket was completely empty and he was forced to fend for himself. It was bad enough that he had left his toothbrush and deodorant upstairs; fortunately, he kept an electric razor in the downstairs bathroom for emergencies, so that even though he might _smell_ like a tramp, at least he didn't have to _look_ like one – yet.

He continued to sit there, thinking, as the minutes ticked away on the old clock on the mantel, mostly because getting up and going to bed wasn't exactly an alternative to be looked upon with much anticipation. It was all his own damned fault, of course. There was no denying that Milton C. Hardcastle was stubborn and pigheaded, determined to handle life on his own terms, every inch the donkey that McCormick had christened him at the very beginning of their association. Therefore, it would have been no surprise to anyone who knew him that initially he had been reluctant to see his doctor when the pain began.

Hardcastle had never been a stupid man, however, and it had only taken a few hours of Friday's torture before he knew he was dealing with something that even his iron willpower could not overcome. But it was the weekend, and Charlie Friedman had already gone out of town by the time he had called for an emergency appointment late that afternoon. After that, it had been easy to convince himself that Monday morning would be soon enough – but now here was George's funeral tomorrow, so he would just have to grit his teeth and reschedule for Tuesday. Anytime was fine with him, so long as it all got done before McCormick finally came home on Wednesday.

That was the only saving grace about all this: the fact that McCormick knew nothing about any of it. Nothing about the pain, and nothing about the funerals, and that was mostly thanks to the temporary increase in scholastic workload that came with preparing to miss five days of law school. Cutting that many classes at one time was a no-no of the first order, but McCormick, with his innate talent for making just about any situation work to his benefit, had struck deals with his professors to make up some of the lessons beforehand. He had managed to pull it off because his professors liked him; he was smart, and quick, and funny, and he wasn't impressed with pomp and circumstance as were so many of his fellow students. So the instructors in question had caved in to his pleading, giving him advance assignments and allowing him research projects for make-up points, then had sat back to watch as he scrambled to do the almost impossible within an inconceivably short span of time.

Of course, the down side to his machinations had been that, for the week or so prior to his departure for Florida, McCormick had been buried beneath the extra workload, his life nothing more than a blur. He had no spare time to catch the odd obituary in the local paper and no real opportunity to take notice of the fact that Hardcastle's health was declining at an alarming rate. The kid had eaten all his meals on the fly, ultimately spending all of his days at school, most of his evenings at the library, and almost no time at all at Gulls' Way.

During that period, all Hardcastle had seen of McCormick were brief glimpses early in the morning, when the kid would careen from the gatehouse to his car via the patio table, snatching up the slice of toast and glass of juice that always awaited him there. He would pause only long enough to call out a greeting to the solitary figure that waved back from the shadowy security of the kitchen doorway; then he would be in the Coyote and gone, roaring down the drive in a cloud of fumes. At the end of another long day, he would return home well into the small hours of the morning and go directly to the gatehouse and bed, never suspecting that Hardcastle might still be awake, alone in his darkened den, miserable and aching, but determined that his illness would not spoil McCormick's long awaited and much deserved reward.

Hardcastle knew that he was wrong in deceiving McCormick in this way – in his view, even a lie of omission was still a lie – and he could not deny that he had missed McCormick's presence during these last trying days, was missing him desperately right this minute. But that did not negate Hardcastle's relief that his friend was being spared the uncertainty and worry that faced him right now, to say nothing of _his _being spared the inevitable questioning that would ensue once McCormick finally had the opportunity to take belated stock of his afflicted mentor. And once that happened, there would be hell to pay – but Hardcastle would cross that bridge when he came to it.

His elbows braced against the top of his desk, Hardcastle rubbed his face with his hands and ruminated on all these things, perhaps as a means of evading a final decision about San Francisco. But it was getting late, and he was so tired, and sooner or later he was going to have to decide. Finally resolving that early in the morning was soon enough to be heading north, he called George's mother to let her know when he would be arriving, then reluctantly rolled his chair back, turned off his desk lamp, and made his way across the den to his new, less than luxurious bed.

Too exhausted to divest himself of his damp clothing, he lay down on the sofa, its cold leather only adding to his misery, and pulled over himself the wrinkled sheets that were draped haphazardly across the cushions. Bunching a pillow under his head, he closed his eyes and tried not to think about how cold he was, or how badly he hurt, or how much he wished McCormick was there to tell him what a donkey he was for being so sick and tired and depressed.

Gradually he slipped into an uneasy doze, full of elusive and unnerving dreams – visions of a sleek crimson object that was only too familiar, slamming into a concrete wall at outrageous speeds, separating on impact into flying red and black fragments that seemed to impale themselves painfully into his mind. The image would then dissolve into pulsating red and blue bursts of light, flashing with a monotonous regularity, as the whiteness of passing arc lights streamed alongside, extending into long yellow tongues of fire, all to the accompaniment of an eerie and frightening silence, rather than the wailing sirens that the scene seemed to require. Once, during a particularly terrifying passage, he could _almost _recognize a treasured face pierced by red-tinged daggers of glass, and even in his sleep, his heart suddenly clenched in fear for something that he could only vaguely identify.

As he tossed restlessly, it seemed as though a hand rested gently across his forehead, cool and soothing, so vivid in his imagination that it seemed almost a part of reality. As his subconscious noted this strange sensation, he realized without any real surprise the source of his anxious dreams: he was worrying about McCormick. McCormick, who was carousing in some Florida juke joint, _not_ crashing his red Coyote head-on into the fourth turn wall of the Daytona Speedway; McCormick, who had been merely a spectator this afternoon behind reinforced steel fencing, rather than competing at speeds in excess of two hundred miles per hour, protected only by thin metal and a woefully inadequate flameproof suit. McCormick, who would be home in three days, no doubt predestined to anger at Hardcastle's deception and vehemently vocal on that score – but nevertheless _home_, safe and sound, where he belonged.

And with that comforting thought, Hardcastle's tormented imaginings began to diminish, even as the inexplicably warmer and heavier cotton sheet began to ease his feverish shivering, and he was lulled into a deep sleep, at last untroubled by the nightmares that had plagued him earlier.

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Eventually Hardcastle woke to a glow showing darkly orange through his closed eyelids, coming from the direction of his desk lamp. He could have sworn he had turned that lamp off, but he knew his mind wasn't exactly working on all cylinders, and even the part of his brain that was concerned with possible intruders could not compel the rest of his body to do anything about it. Reluctantly he opened his eyes, narrowing them against the lamp's dim glare. He could see the edge of the pillow still crumpled under his head, and a glance down the sofa revealed the sheet still in place, somehow augmented by a woven blanket that usually resided alongside the pillow on the top shelf of the hall closet. Puzzled, he turned his head to look across to his desk, where the lamp was turned to its lowest setting. And there in his chair, thumbing thoughtfully through the folder of obituary clippings, sat Mark McCormick.

At the sight of his friend actually sitting there in his den, _truly_ safe and sound, only five feet away instead of twenty-five hundred miles, Hardcastle closed his eyes in abject thanksgiving, despite the fact that all his devious doings during their phone conversations had obviously been for naught. Still, he tried to inject a little irritation into his tone as he spoke, more for form's sake than for any other reason. "What're _you_ doin' here?" he asked, his voice unexpectedly feeble, even to his own ears. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You're supposed to be in some honkytonk in Florida right now."

McCormick glanced up at the sound of Hardcastle's voice, his face shadowed in the dim light cast by the lamp. "I've got news for you, Hardcase. I got home almost an hour ago, and I've been sitting here watching you toss and turn since I walked in that door. What were you thinking, anyway, leaving the front door unlocked like that? It's getting to where I can't leave you by yourself at all anymore." McCormick got up and came to Hardcastle's side, pulling over an ottoman in the process. "And now that you're awake, you want to tell me what the heck is going on here? You've got a fever going that could start a four-alarm fire."

So the hand on his forehead hadn't been his imagination after all. Vaguely reassured by that fact, Hardcastle said nothing for a moment as he watched McCormick settle himself onto the ottoman and wait patiently for his answer. Then the judge laid his head back against the pillow and grimaced, wondering where to begin, the ache in his abdomen a constant reminder of where he would undoubtedly finish. Finally, he announced in a fatalistic voice, "I don't feel so hot."

"I can _see_ that," McCormick replied, frowning. "I could hear it in your voice this afternoon."

_Well_, Hardcastle thought, _so much for my version of normal_. He glanced over at his friend. "That's why you're here, huh?"

"Yeah, Judge, that's why I'm here." McCormick grinned faintly. "It was a nice try, though. A heck of a performance. You woulda fooled anyone else, but you musta been crazy to think you could fool me, even over the phone. I just know you too well." His expression sobered as he leaned forward, reaching out to touch Hardcastle's forehead, frowning at the heat he found there. "I'm serious. What's going on here?"

"Nothing's going on," rasped Hardcastle obstinately, ignoring McCormick's look of skepticism. "I've just been feeling a little, well, under the weather lately. No big deal, nothing for you to worry about." But even as he spoke, he found himself pulling the covers ever tighter, trying in vain to suppress a sudden chill, and he swallowed against the resurgence of pain that the movement initiated. His actions were not lost on McCormick.

"Is that so?" replied McCormick, eyebrows raised in patent disbelief. "So tell me, Hardcase, since when did you start sleeping on the sofa?"

Hardcastle stared at the ceiling with an assumed air of resigned patience and muttered irritably, "Since I took a fancy to sleeping on the sofa."

"And just when did _that_ start?"

"Friday," Hardcastle stated shortly. McCormick made no reply, just stared at him determinedly. The inflexible silence lengthened, with neither side giving way, until Hardcastle could stand no more, saying in a goaded voice, "Look, all that happened was, Friday morning, I was trimming the rosebushes, just minding my own business, and all of a sudden it got worse, and it got downright bad when I tried to climb the stairs ... so I just stopped climbing 'em."

McCormick's stare changed from resolute to slightly alarmed. "_What _got bad when you tried to climb the stairs?"

"The pain."

McCormick's eyes widened, and he leaned forward, his voice losing a little of its calm reasonableness. "The _pain_? What pain, where?"

"In my gut," Hardcastle replied tersely. "It's not anything much," he added unconvincingly, "just ... a little pain, that's all."

Hardcastle would have preferred to end the conversation right then and there, but the worried aggravation on McCormick's face showed that the matter was far from closed in his mind, and reluctantly Hardcastle provided a little more general detail. "It's not like it's like that all the time, okay? Sometimes it just hurts worse than other times. It hits me down around here." He gestured in the general direction of his stomach. "It started out just being kinda, well, painful, sort of a steady ache, but lately, it's been hurting a little worse than it did before, and when it gets bad, it gets, well, bad."

"And all this started out of the blue on Friday morning?"

"Well ..." Hardcastle answered reluctantly. "Actually, I've been feeling a little, uh, not myself for a while now."

McCormick looked as though he didn't know whether to be furious or frightened, before the scales came down on the side of fury. "And you weren't gonna tell me anything about this, just send me off to the races and expect me to stay there like a good little boy?"

McCormick's anger was evident in the sparkle in his eyes and the brittleness of his voice, and Hardcastle bit back the caustic retort that came automatically to his lips. He had neither the strength to argue nor the inclination to make up fake excuses, and for some reason, he could not bear the thought of being at odds with McCormick now. So he replied in a conciliatory, yet surprisingly sincere voice, "Look, kiddo, I never meant not to tell you about it. But I wanted you to have a good time, see?" He studied McCormick's face with earnest intensity. "I was gonna talk to you after I'd been to the doctor, honest to God I was, but I didn't get _really_ sick until the weekend. And then I couldn't get an appointment with Charlie, and besides, there were all those funerals I had to go to."

"Yeah, I was just reading through your little obituary file." McCormick replied softly, his anger fading as he leaned back and surveyed his friend. "Judge, why didn't you _tell_ me? I know I was out of pocket, but at least I coulda gone with you to the funerals – well, to a couple of 'em anyway. Heck, I would have gone in your place, if it meant you going to the doctor and getting a head start on this thing."

"McCormick, you were _busy_," Hardcastle answered in a peevish tone. "What you were doin' was a lot more important than being stuck with a bunch of old guys having one last get-together. I gotta admit, it was a little strange, having three 'one-last-get-togethers', one right after the other, but that's how it goes sometimes." He smiled crookedly. "Anyway, would you really have wanted to stand there and listen to me give those eulogies, much less delivered 'em yourself?"

McCormick looked startled. "You mean you had to eulogize _all_ those guys?" He darted a thoughtful glance toward the folder on Hardcastle's desk, then his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Even Judge _Browner_? I thought you _hated_ Browner."

"I didn't _hate_ Browner," Hardcastle answered with injured dignity. "He was just, well, hard to get along with. And no, I didn't give his eulogy. They tapped Mattie Groves to do that. She did a pretty good job, too," he added thoughtfully, "considering what she had to work with, which wasn't all that much."

McCormick snorted in agreement. "Well, Great Orator of the Cemetery Set, I think it's about time you took care of yourself, otherwise Mattie'll be trying to find good things to say about you, too." He stood up and shook a stern finger in Hardcastle's face. "Tomorrow, I take you to see Charlie. Period. No argument. End of discussion."

"I can't see Charlie tomorrow," Hardcastle answered distractedly, belatedly recalling his earlier phone conversations. "I'd already planned to, I have an appointment, it's written on my calendar. But I can't. I have to go to San Francisco tomorrow."

"San Francisco?" asked McCormick in bewilderment, sinking back down onto the ottoman. "Why do you have to go to San Francisco?"

"To deliver another damned _eulogy_, that's why," Hardcastle suddenly bellowed, causing McCormick to rear back in startled surprise; even the judge looked a little nonplussed at his unexpected outburst. "It's for George," Hardcastle continued more quietly. "I gotta do it."

"George? You don't mean George Mangell?" McCormick replied in genuine distress. "Oh, Judge, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"I didn't know myself until his mother called me not long after you called this afternoon. She told me that George had specially asked for me, and I couldn't say no, now, could I?" He looked straightly at McCormick, knowing that he was going to take some flak for this, but resolved nevertheless to do this one last thing for an old friend. "Just this one funeral, okay, McCormick? Then I'll go to the doctor. I _swear_ I will."

"You bet you'll be going to the doctor, because I'll be taking you there myself." Hardcastle made no reply, and McCormick sat back, perplexed at Hardcastle's unexpected acquiescence. "You're not arguing?"

"Nope, I'm not arguing." At the look of bewildered astonishment on McCormick's face, the judge began to laugh, only to have the laughter change to groaning as the dull pain quickly intensified to that severe throbbing that literally took his breath away. Involuntarily Hardcastle curled sideways into a fetal position, his hands buried deep in his abdomen as he tried ineffectively to suppress the swelling agony.

In an instant, a white-faced McCormick was on his knees by the sofa, trying to pry away Hardcastle's hands so he could determine where the pain was coming from. "Judge, look at me, tell me where it hurts. Judge, listen to me, _show me where it hurts! _"

Hardcastle had broken out into a sweat, and his jaw was set rigidly in his effort to keep from crying out, but he was able to grab McCormick's wrist and guide his hand toward his upper abdomen. "Here," he managed to whisper hoarsely through gritted teeth, "it hurts right here. Oh, dear _God,_ how it _hurts_."

McCormick raised his anxious gaze to Hardcastle's contorted face, saying with frightened urgency, "Judge, this ain't some little no-account pain you got going on here. I'm calling an ambulance." Rising hastily, he tried to pull his hand away.

"_No!_" Hardcastle said explosively, holding onto McCormick's forearm with a grip like a vise, using his last bit of strength to pull him back down to the floor beside the sofa. "Wait, it'll calm down in a few minutes, I know it will," he gasped, panting desperately, silently cursing this unrelenting misery that made it so hard to think or act. But true to his word, the pain finally began to fade, and his breathing slowly evened out, the tension in his body once more gradually giving way to the familiar, slightly less incapacitating aching.

McCormick took a deep breath and gently freed his arm from Hardcastle's relaxed grasp. Then, taking the judge's wrist between the fingers of his right hand, he began counting silently, while Hardcastle watched wearily through half-closed eyes. Whatever the count was, McCormick was clearly unhappy with it, although he roused himself to smile weakly at the judge and say, "A hell of a way to go for twenty, Hardcase." He didn't release the judge's wrist, though, only held it firmly, with a convulsive tension that spoke volumes about how scared he really was. There was no doubt about the sincerity in his voice when he said, "Judge. _Please._ You need to go to the hospital. This is a _lot_ more serious than you let on."

"Kid, I can't. I gotta go to San Francisco. I promised Stella."

McCormick let go of Hardcastle's wrist and sat back against the ottoman in exasperation, meeting the judge's beseeching gaze with pursed lips and furrowed brow. As Hardcastle waited patiently, he thought how odd it was that he was the one trying to wheedle concessions from McCormick, rather than the other way around. Then he thought about McCormick's unusually high rate of success, and found himself hoping that he had managed to learn _something_ from the master during the past three years.

Finally, McCormick spoke, his eyes regretful but his voice determined. "Judge, you can't go anywhere in this condition. What if something happens while we're there? What if the pain gets worse until you can't stand it anymore, huh? What am _I_ supposed to do if we're a hundred and fifty miles from nowhere, and you pass out on me?" McCormick shook his head in firm denial. "Judge, I can't take that kind of chance, and I'm not gonna let you do it either. No way, no how. If you won't let me call an ambulance, then we'll get you up and into the truck, and we'll go to the emergency room – right now."

The answer was short and to the point. "No."

"_Hardcastle_ ..."

"I said 'no', and I mean 'no'. I'm going to George's funeral, even if I do end up flat on my back because of it." Hardcastle sighed gloomily. "It's not like I'm not already flat on my back anyway."

"Well," McCormick asked reasonably, "since you put it that way, why don't you let me go ahead and call that ambulance, and we'll get you to the hospital, and you can just skip the part where you have to get up and dressed, and ride six hours to a funeral, and all the rest of it?"

"_No_."

McCormick stood up and put his hands on his hips, glowering down at his friend. "Look, you donkey, it's not like George will know whether you're there or not. And Mrs. Mangell will understand, you know she will."

"Yeah, but I gave her my _word_," Hardcastle said stubbornly, matching glare for glare, "and I'm gonna have to be a lot sicker than I am now for me to break my word."

"Judge, let me tell you something. I was kneeling right there beside you just now, and I'm here to tell you, you get any sicker than that, and, well, I just don't think you can _get _any sicker than that."

Hardcastle knew better, remembering vividly the times when the pain had been accompanied by such a wretched nausea that he'd been more than happy to see his appetite depart, just so he wouldn't have anything left in his stomach to throw up. But he wasn't about to say anything to McCormick about _that_. He tried another tack. "Look, McCormick," he said. "It really doesn't get that bad all that often. I'll be okay tomorrow, honest. See, I'm fine now. Watch me."

As Hardcastle struggled to sit upright on the sofa, McCormick stood there and, as instructed, watched impassively for a few seconds, before offering a hand and hoisting the judge up to a sitting position. Hardcastle tentatively swung his feet to the floor, stoically repressing the inevitable wince that came with the resurgent throbbing. Then he stood up under his own power and faced McCormick, praying that the dizziness that suddenly assaulted him wasn't apparent in his stance. He could tell nothing from McCormick's deadpan expression, although the fact that his friend still stood fairly close by might be considered a pretty good indicator of his lack of success in that particular area.

Not that any of it made any difference. What happened next was still _his_ decision to make, not McCormick's, and he wasn't going to change his mind. And if McCormick didn't like it, well ... that was just the way it had to be, and he supposed there was no time like the present to make that fact be known.

"McCormick," he began evenly, his eyes steady on McCormick's face, "the bottom line is, I'm going to San Francisco tomorrow, with or without you. If you don't go, I won't blame you a bit. I was gonna have to go by myself anyway, and I can probably catch the train first thing in the morning and still get there in plenty of time. There'll be lots of people on the train, kiddo, so it's not like I'll be all by myself if something happens. Will that make you happy?"

"No, it won't," McCormick replied shortly in his turn. "If you're so determined to go to San Francisco tomorrow, I'll take you there myself." He turned away sharply and strode towards the door, pausing on the first step to turn and say with measured coldness, "But, Hardcastle, you'd better know what you're doing. Because I'll be _damned_ if I'll be the one who's gonna pick up the pieces if you don't." Then he was up the stairs and out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

Deprived of his unhappy audience, the determination that had carried Hardcastle to his feet deserted him, and he would have fallen if he hadn't first caught hold of the wingchair. In both his head and his heart, he knew that McCormick was right. But what McCormick didn't know was that he'd seen symptoms like these before, perhaps not identical to them, but close enough, and if they meant what he thought they did, it wouldn't matter much in the long run whether or not he went to San Francisco tomorrow. In fact, he seriously doubted there would even _be_ a long run; whatever he did, the ending would still be the same, in more ways than one.

Lost in his morbid reflections, Hardcastle had made it as far as the base of the steps leading up to the door, when suddenly the door opened to reveal McCormick, Hardcastle's toothbrush in his hand and a pair of pajamas draped over his arm. He caught sight of the judge standing there, clinging to the banister as if it were his very last hope, and said impatiently, "Well, c'mon, Kemosabe, it's getting late."

"Late for what?" asked Hardcastle cautiously, remaining right where he was until he knew for sure what McCormick was up to.

"Ju-udge," said McCormick, rolling his eyes, "if you're heading north tomorrow, you're gonna need a good night's rest, and you're not gonna get any trying to sleep on that sofa. You're sleeping in Sarah's old room tonight, I've already turned down the sheets, but first you're gonna have a warm shower and some fresh pajamas. And this time," he added ominously, "I'm _not_ losing the argument."

The program as described sounded like sheer heaven to Hardcastle, although he'd never in a million years admit it to McCormick. Instead, he said nothing at all, just carefully ascended the two steps to McCormick's side, holding tightly to the banister – just to be on the safe side, he assured himself.

As for McCormick, he stood in the doorway, watching the judge's progress, his face tight with protective concern. He stood aside to let the judge pass through the double doors into the hallway, muttering to himself as he followed him out the door, "Besides, I _always_ have dibs on the sofa."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Early the next morning, Mark McCormick was first in line at the classic car rental place, waiting impatiently for the staff to complete its morning routine before coming to serve their customers. The evening before, he and Hardcastle had agreed that a twelve-hour round trip in either the pickup or the Coyote might be a little more than the judge could handle at one sitting, so rather than go by train, they had decided a high-end rental car was the best solution.

McCormick knew exactly what he wanted; it had been displayed in all its automotive glory in the showroom window the last time he had come here to rent the usual venerable Studebaker for the aunts' last visit. The clerk looked a little dubious at McCormick's request, but once the owner learned of his interest – and the credit line assigned to the VISA Gold card proffered at the outset of the negotiations – he displayed a remarkable alacrity in producing the keys and demonstrating all the car's amazing attributes, and it was only a matter of minutes before the paperwork was completed and the charge slip signed.

Shortly thereafter, McCormick was rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway, clipping along at a satisfactory sixty-five miles per hour before being alerted to the upcoming speed trap by a series of ever-faster chirps emitted by the device attached by a suction cup to the center of the windshield, just below the rearview mirror. Slowing down to the double nickel well in advance of the nick of time, he smiled and waved nonchalantly to the traffic cop staring at him from his strategic position behind a billboard.

At length arriving at the estate, he drove serenely down the drive and around the fountain, braking smoothly to a stop in front of the main house. Hardcastle stood waiting on the stoop, staring doubtfully at the vehicle in which he was expected to travel for the better part of the day. As McCormick climbed out of the car, he gestured gracefully down its impressive length and announced regally, "Your chariot awaits, milord."

"You expect me to go to a funeral in _that_?" Hardcastle asked in a wondering voice as he walked down the front steps, carrying his jacket and overcoat across one arm. He stopped at the edge of the curb and took a closer look at the red-and-black behemoth masquerading as transportation. "McCormick, this thing looks like the Coyote on steroids."

McCormick smiled proudly at his rented pride and joy. "She's a big beauty, isn't she? I know she's a little gaudy..." He ignored Hardcastle's derisive snort and continued with an air of smugness, "Frankly, I didn't know if they even rented it out, maybe they just displayed it for show. I figured we'd have to make do with a Caddy or a Lincoln, but no, there she was, just waiting for me." His face clouded briefly. "It _woulda_ been kinda nice if she were a color that's a little more, uh, restrained, but let's face it, beggars can't be choosers."

"'Beggars' is right," Hardcastle replied as he cautiously opened the passenger door and peered inside. "I don't even want to _think_ about what the rental is gonna be on this thing. I know, I know," he added, before McCormick could say a word. "It's just for one day, and I did say you could get whatever you wanted. Famous last words." He glanced up suspiciously. "You _did_ get insurance, right?"

"Yes, Oh Frugal One, I did indeed," McCormick replied, retrieving a thin sheaf of papers from his inside jacket pocket and waving them in Hardcastle's face. "Complete with all the riders. No way was I driving off the lot without 'em. Do you know, I could replace the Coyote three times over for what this car is worth? It's a classic!"

"For God's sake, McCormick, it's an _Edsel_."

McCormick looked briefly affronted. "Well, yeah, but it's not just _any_ Edsel, Judge, it's a top-of-the-line 1958 Edsel Citation two-door hardtop that goes for about seventy grand on the open market." McCormick smiled as he gazed proudly at the gleaming red finish, quickly pulling out his handkerchief and polishing an invisible spot just below the wipers. He continued dreamily, "Y'know, I've always wanted to drive an Edsel. They just don't make 'em like this anymore."

"I expect there's a reason for that," Hardcastle said dryly as he settled himself into the passenger seat, leaning over to inspect the rather odd-looking steering wheel. "I hope you know how to drive this thing. Wasn't this model one of those push-button jobs where the gear shifts are located where the horn's supposed to be?" He poked gingerly at the array of buttons set in a circle around the center hub of the wheel.

"Yes, Judge, it _does_ have an electric Teletouch push-button transmission, and yes, I _do_ know how to drive it," McCormick replied in a patronizing tone as he slid into the driver's seat and swatted Hardcastle's hand away from the wheel. "I managed to get it here, didn't I?"

"Sure you did, but you'd still better be careful," Hardcastle replied absently, as he began prowling through the glove compartment, huge by 1980's standards. "As I remember, those steering-wheel transmissions didn't go over so hot. Seems people kept trying to hit their horns, and ended up shifting their cars into reverse instead." He glanced up at the windshield. "What's _that_ thing?"

"That _thing_, my dear Hardcastle, is a radar detector. It came with the car."

"An Edsel with a radar detector? You gotta be kidding." The judge examined the contraption more closely. "Looks pretty modern to me."

"I'll have you know that my new friend Jack, who owns the Rent-A-Classic place, has 'an excellent reputation for modifying his timeless automobiles to suit the needs of his valued customers'," McCormick answered in a sing-song chant as he read from the brochure he'd just discovered tucked neatly in the corner of the dash. "As a matter of fact, it's one of the modifications on this particular car that I thought just might come in handy on this trip. It'd take us a hell of a long time to drive up the coast going fifty-five miles per hour."

"Well, you're not gonna use it while I'm in here, I can tell you that," Hardcastle replied tartly as he inspected the lap belt that seemed to be part of the original equipment. Shaking his head in resigned bemusement, he snapped it into the closed position as he continued, "If you have to speed, you can take your chances just like all the other schmucks out there."

"Yeah, sure, Judge," McCormick muttered under his breath as he fastened his own safety belt and tapped the button marked 'Dr' for 'Drive'. "Like I won't be the only schmuck out there _not_ using a radar detector."

0000000000

The sun was already well past its zenith when a less-than-happy McCormick pulled the Edsel out of an east San Francisco funeral home parking lot and into its allotted slot in the cortege, one of a long line of vehicles snaking its way toward a small private park located well north of Vallejo. In making his plans the evening before, Hardcastle had assumed the services would be held in the funeral home chapel; the discovery that George had requested his ashes to be scattered along a favorite fishing stream in the Napa Valley had been an unpleasant surprise. The unforeseen detour would add at least a good two hours to their journey, turning what had already seemed a very long day into an almost interminable one.

Up to that point, it had been an uneventful trip. Hardcastle had spent most of the time staring out the window, seemingly engrossed in the passing scenery, the whiteness about his mouth the only outward sign of his discomfort, while McCormick fiddled with the A.M. radio in a fruitless search for a decent station. Their only stop had been at a service station/convenience store combo, where McCormick topped off the tank with premium before grabbing a soft drink and a bag of chips on his way to the checkout counter. Hardcastle had refused any food at all, only drinking a little water from the fountain just inside the station office, taking no notice of the worried look McCormick darted at him as they climbed back into the car and resumed their journey, finally reaching the San Francisco suburbs some four hours later.

Now, as they loped along Interstate 80 at a rather higher rate of speed than was normally associated with funeral processions, McCormick removed his sunglasses and noted the position of the sun in the winter sky, remarking sarcastically, "I expect this'll just about take us right into the five o'clock Bay Area rush hour." The expression on his face was eloquent of his thoughts on the subject. "Judge, I'm beginning to wish I'd locked you in the bathroom and _made_ you stay at home."

Hardcastle was sitting slumped in his seat, eyes closed, his head leaned back at an uncomfortable angle, the Edsel having been designed long before the concept of headrests was even a twinkle in the eye of some long-forgotten automotive engineer. Turning his head without actually raising it, he opened his eyes and returned McCormick's acid glance, before replying with an unexpected and weary candidness, "Kiddo, I'm beginning to wish you had, too."

McCormick took his eyes off the road for a second to look at the judge in surprised concern. "Judge, why don't you let the seat back?" he asked quietly. "You'd be a lot more comfortable, you know, and it _is_ one of the newfangled perks that came with the car."

"I don't know, there's just something _strange_ about a 60/40 seat-back that reclines – it's just not natural in a car this old." Hardcastle caught the look of real worry in McCormick's eyes, and so, in a grudging effort to please him, Hardcastle pulled at the lever and let the seat lean back at a slight angle. He glared at McCormick from his skewered vantage point. "There, satisfied?"

McCormick grinned cheerfully. "Yep."

Once more donning his sunglasses against the glare, McCormick returned his attention to his driving, as Hardcastle began to doze in his corner. Silence reigned until they reached the outskirts of the Napa Valley, when Hardcastle roused from his restless sleep and began gazing out the window again. Suddenly, without warning, he burst out in a tone of irritated disbelief, "I can't believe Stella didn't tell me she was having George _cremated_!"

"She probably thought you wouldn't come if she did," McCormick answered, his eyes shielded by his sunglasses as he watched the road ahead, only a faint dimple at the corner of his mouth betraying his amusement. "Let's face it, Judge, this is an awfully long way to travel, just to say some nice words over a quart of ashes."

Hardcastle offered no reply as he stared through the windshield with a moody absorption. Eventually he stirred and remarked at random, "Somewhere up there, George is laughing his fool head off."

McCormick glanced across in puzzlement. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that I've probably done my last round of fishing up in these parts. Dad blame it, I liked that trout stream, too." Hardcastle lay back in his seat, staring at the roof as he simmered gently. "From now on, every time I hook a nice fish there, I won't be able to eat it for thinking I might be eating a little speck of George, too."

"Yeah, well, in that case, let's just hope George is biodegradable," McCormick answered with a straight face.

Hardcastle shot him a caustic glance. "Oh, that's funny, McCormick. Real funny."

"_You _started it."

After a brief meditative silence, Hardcastle remarked thoughtfully, "I guess we'll know for sure if the water starts bubbling up when Stella spreads the ashes, won't we?"

McCormick shook his head sadly as he flicked on the turn indicator and prepared to follow the cortege down an approaching exit ramp. "Poor old George. From public defender to public health hazard. What a way to go."

0000000000

It was late afternoon by the time George Mangell's nearest and dearest were finally assembled together, standing at solemn attention in a beautiful glade, the sun streaming through the lower branches of the surrounding trees, its rays sparkling on the clear flowing water of an honest-to-gosh babbling brook. A gentle but chilly breeze ruffled McCormick's hair as he stood by Hardcastle's side, keeping an anxious eye on his pale and exhausted charge while absently listening to the minister's mellifluent voice drone on and on and on. The judge had already spoken his few simple words, as eloquent if not quite so longwinded, and now it only remained for the minister to complete his endless remarks. Then the ashes could be scattered, and they could finally head for home.

Eventually the minister finished speaking, and Stella Mangell stepped up to the edge of the brook to toss her son's ashes gently over its shimmering surface. As the glittering dust began to drift down toward the water, McCormick saw that Hardcastle had had almost as much as he could bear, his marble features and rigid stance revealing the enormous effort expended in remaining upright and motionless. Instinctively, McCormick moved closer to the judge's side and stood in silent readiness, prepared to offer any necessary support, physical or otherwise, should the judge's indomitable will begin to fail before this waking nightmare finally came to an end.

Mercifully, the remainder of the service was brief, with the ash-scattering marked only by an effervescence natural to a fast-moving stream, McCormick was absurdly relieved to note. Mrs. Mangell then turned to Hardcastle, and in her grief, she did not notice the judge's unsteadiness as he embraced her gently, or the haste with which McCormick kissed her cheek. As she moved away to greet the other mourners, McCormick lost no time in hustling the judge back to the car, hurriedly divesting him of his jacket and tie before safely depositing him into the passenger seat of the Edsel.

"God, I thought that would never end," McCormick groaned as he rested his forehead against the car's black vinyl roof. He studied Hardcastle through the open window. "How ya doin'?"

"Ready to get home," Hardcastle answered wearily, as he slid down and rested his head against the seat cushion. "I've about decided that you were absolutely right."

"Right about what?" asked McCormick, pulling off his own tie as he prepared to cross to the driver's side.

"It really didn't matter to George whether I was here or not," Hardcastle said shortly. "Oh, well, too late now. C'mon, let's get out of here."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

By the time they had driven from George Mangell's final resting place to the first of the main highway arteries north of the Bay Area, the rush-hour traffic was already building to near impassable levels. Hardcastle had said nothing since their departure, dozing as he lay crossways against the seat, his head lolling between the edge of the seatback and the glass of the door window. He was obviously hurting; his face, previously so pale, had begun to flush under the effects of a rising fever, and he shivered under the overcoat that McCormick had removed from the back seat and spread over him before leaving the park.

At McCormick's tentative suggestion that perhaps they had best go to an emergency room, Hardcastle had not even bothered to argue, replying simply with a determined "No", which seemed to settle the issue, for Hardcastle anyway. As McCormick pulled into a Burger King in Vallejo, he noticed a pay phone just inside the entrance door, and it occurred to him that now might be a good time to look up an address for the nearest hospital. He might well have followed through on the thought if Hardcastle had not sat up and watched as he had gone in and given his order; he could feel those steely eyes upon him the entire time he stood at the counter, waiting patiently for his meal and the glass of ice water that had become Hardcastle's only apparent source of sustenance. Clearly any clandestine attempt to use either the phone or its directory was out of the question.

Now they were sitting in the restaurant parking lot, the map spread out between them, as McCormick wolfed down his hamburger and Hardcastle used the flashlight he had found in the glove compartment to supplement the weak dome light. McCormick peered at the section of the map where the judge had the flashlight aimed. "It might be quickest to take I-5 south, then cut across to Oxnard, but I think what time we'd save going that way, we'd lose by having to head west before starting south. Besides," McCormick added abruptly, "I don't like I-5."

Hardcastle glanced up from the map, his brows raised in amused inquiry. "What is it about I-5 you don't like?"

"I dunno, I just don't like it. Maybe because it's so boring." McCormick looked back at the map. "Judge, let's just stick with the guy what brung us, and go home on 101. Okay with you?"

"You're the one who's driving. Any old route works for me, so long as we get back to Malibu sometime tonight." Hardcastle snapped off the flashlight and returned it to the glove compartment, before settling back against the car seat, with his coat spread over him as before. "You know, kiddo, I kinda got mixed emotions about going home. It'll be nice getting there after the kind of day we've had, but I think we both know where I'm probably gonna be spending tomorrow night."

"Yeah," McCormick replied softly, his face unreadable in the darkness. He paused for a moment, then briskly folded the map and handed it to Hardcastle. "Here, put this in there with the flashlight. We shouldn't need it again tonight, but you never know."

Starting the car, he pulled out the knob that controlled the headlights, and dimmed the lights with a touch of his foot, feeling an odd nostalgia as he did so; he hadn't used a floorboard dimmer switch in years. Then he carefully nudged the Edsel back into the bumper-to-bumper traffic and headed south, through the maze of interstate and multilane highways, in the general direction of home.

As it turned out, Interstate 5 might well have been a better option, despite McCormick's personal prejudice toward its boredom factor. It had taken awhile, but they eventually made their way through the Bay Area congestion to Highway 101, where the traffic finally began to ease around Gilroy. Even without the benefit of the radar detector, they had begun to make a little time, but while they were still midway between San Ardo and Bradley, a fast-moving thunderstorm came in swiftly off the Pacific, hard on the heels of a series of storms that had assaulted this area off and on for the past week or so.

Taken by surprise, McCormick had to hunt to find the wiper control, but the blades had hardly begun swishing across the windshield when suddenly red lights began to blink on ahead of him, reflecting steadily across the wet pavement, and he was forced to brake to a near standstill. With a sigh and a glance toward the sleeping Hardcastle, McCormick turned on the radio and lowered the volume, lucking onto a local station just as the announcer was giving the weather report. According to the deep baritone voice, the area had received an unprecedented ten inches in total rainfall for the month of February, and even though the sky had now cleared as quickly as it had clouded, more rain was promised for later that evening.

Then, abruptly changing his hat from weatherman to newsman, the announcer provided some information that McCormick had already suspected. The latest storm had left not only an additional two unnecessary inches, but also a predictable calling card: a major eighteen-wheeler/multi-car pileup on Highway 101 a mile or two north of the San Miguel exit that had traffic backed up in both directions. So now here they were, at nine o'clock at night, stranded in Monterey County, still much too far from home, stationary among what appeared to be thousands of other frustrated motorists, with the judge clearly far from well.

Hardcastle still seemed to be asleep, but the tightness of his mouth and the unevenness of his breathing showed that his slumber was not a very peaceful one. Reluctant to disturb him, McCormick decided to make an executive decision, and pulling onto the shoulder of the highway, he sped past the other waiting cars to the Bradley exit, only a few hundred yards ahead.

The inevitable reaction of their fellow motorists woke Hardcastle, who peered around in bleary bemusement. "Hey, why are all those people honking at us?"

"We're caught in a traffic jam, Hardcase, and it looks like a big one, so I'm sorta taking a shortcut to find us a detour."

"Well, so long as you don't try honking back," Hardcastle murmured sleepily, settling back down beneath his overcoat. "Or else you might find yourself backing right into a bunch of cars and starting a whole new traffic jam."

McCormick shot him a dirty look as he pulled in behind the already long line of vehicles turning left across 101 toward Bradley, the view from the overpass revealing the southbound lanes glittering red as far as the eye could see, with hardly any traffic at all coming north. Continuing to follow the line of cars whose drivers had similar plans to his own, he turned onto a southbound road that would probably be fairly well traveled under normal conditions, although the traffic headed north tonight was lighter than he would have expected, considering that northbound motorists from 101 would also be seeking an alternate route.

As he drove, absently following the taillights of the car ahead, McCormick propped one arm against the door and leaned his head against the palm of his hand, considering his woefully small number of options. He seldom traveled this section of 101 anymore, its association in his mind with unwilling journeys to and from San Quentin a little too close to home for comfort, but he seemed to remember that San Miguel was only a few miles south; perhaps he could get back on the main highway there. That would be their best bet; otherwise, they would either have to find a route heading across the Diablo Range to Interstate 5, or head back north to the nearest motel with a vacancy. McCormick was still feeling a little stubborn about I-5, but he knew Hardcastle wasn't going to like the last option at all.

It appeared that Plan A would be frustrated at the outset, when he was stopped just north of San Miguel by two San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's cars, parked diagonally across the road to barricade all lanes of traffic. Most of the vehicles ahead of him were either pulling over to the side of the road, taking side streets, or making U-turns to head back the way they'd come, but McCormick rolled down his window to speak to a deputy who was standing nearby.

"Sorry, sir, you can't go this way," said the deputy, sparing an admiring glance for the shiny Edsel that glinted a weird reddish-blue from the flashing lights. "We have an overturned eighteen-wheeler just this side of town; with all this rain we've had, the highway just caved in under the weight. Took most all the traffic lanes with it, too."

McCormick closed his eyes and banged his head once against the steering wheel in exasperation, to the concern of the deputy and the amusement of Hardcastle, who had roused just in time to observe his annoyed reaction. McCormick sighed and said to the deputy, "Look, I expect you know there's been a bad one out on the main drag, too."

"Yup," replied the deputy dryly. "Otherwise, we probably wouldn't be having an eighteen-wheeler overturned this side of San Miguel." He eyed McCormick sympathetically. "You have one of two choices, sir. You can go back the way you came toward King City, take 198 to Coalinga and make your way to I-5 from there, or you can try making it through town and go on to the next exit back onto 101. I'm warning you, though, there's been some road resurfacing around here lately, and a few streets are closed right now. Getting around might be a little confusing."

"Oh, come on, Deputy, how confusing can a little place like San Miguel be?"

There was a sleepy snort from Hardcastle's corner, as the deputy smiled slightly and said, "Okay, sir, but you better get out pen and paper first ..."

0000000000

Thirty minutes later, they were driving down some unknown county road, and McCormick had an uneasy feeling that not only had they missed the exit to 101, they had missed the right road entirely. There had been a whole series of 'turn right here, turn left there' directions, which he had followed as faithfully as he could, considering that he had been trying to read them in the dim light from the dashboard. Finally, he'd found himself on this paved road, but after driving more than twice the indicated number of miles, it was clear that they were no nearer to the turn-off to Highway 101 than they had been when they started.

McCormick was unhappy with the car too. After a smooth, almost luxurious drive upstate and partway back down, the Edsel had developed an intermittent shimmy in the time since they had left San Miguel, sometimes shaking so that he could barely keep it on the road. This could hardly be due to anything that might have happened while McCormick had been driving the car; he had been very careful about road hazards, and they had remained on more-or-less even pavement the entire trip. There was no doubt in his mind that, come early tomorrow morning, Jack would be appeasing one very unhappy, previously very loyal customer.

The last straw was finally reached for an increasingly irate McCormick when he noticed a suspicious lightening of the cobalt blue sky, and his fears were confirmed when a huge moon began to emerge from the hilly horizon just ahead. He nudged Hardcastle, who came awake with a start. "Better get out that map and flashlight, Judge. I think we're gonna need 'em."

The judge obediently began scrounging in the glove compartment for the requested items. "What's the problem?"

"Well, unless the moon has taken to rising in the south, I'm pretty sure I'm on the wrong road."

"You can't say we weren't warned." Hardcastle unfolded the map and peered at it with the aid of the flashlight. "Headed easterly, are we?"

"That's what it looks like to me," McCormick answered, watching the shoulder of the road carefully for any signs that might help them determine where they were.

"How long've we been on it?"

"Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, I'm not sure. I was trying to follow that deputy's screwed-up directions, and I lost track of time."

"Oh, I see, it's the _deputy's_ fault we don't know where we are." Hardcastle folded the map over and peered closely at the roads running out from San Miguel. "Looks to me like we're on something called Vineyard Canyon Road." He glanced up through the windshield to the road ahead. "If we keep going, it'll take us a little out of our way, but eventually it makes a big swing south and runs into California 46, and that'll take us back to 101 somewhere near Paso Robles." He watched as McCormick's mouth settled into a grim line, prompting him to say in gruff reassurance, "It's okay, kiddo. We're not lost. We're just sort of misdirected."

McCormick's set expression relaxed as he cast a grateful glance at the judge. "Misdirected, huh?" He laughed ruefully. "If you say so, Kemosabe. Why don't you go on back to sleep? I think I got this covered now."

"I sure won't argue with you." Hardcastle put away the map and flashlight, and curled back against the seat, pulling his overcoat right up under his chin. Even by the dashboard light, McCormick could see the pain was worsening, as evidenced by the lines that had etched themselves ever deeper in the judge's face over the past few hours, and by the way he favored his afflicted side even in his sleep. He'd given up wearing his lap belt hours ago, over McCormick's vehement protests, complaining that it just added to his discomfort. As a racecar driver, McCormick believed in seat restraints; even the simplistic lap belts that had been considered high-end optional equipment back in the Edsel's day were better than nothing, and the thought of Hardcastle unsecured in this metal monster just added to his worries.

His own face grim once more, McCormick tossed a defiant glance toward Hardcastle and reached up to switch on the radar detector, ignoring the faint snicker that sounded from beneath the overcoat. Then he pressed down harder on the accelerator, his anger and worry increasing as he reflected on how long they had been traveling, and how far they still were from home. As it turned out, however, his desire for speed came to naught, as he had been driving at seventy for hardly ten minutes when he found himself braking to an abrupt stop, one arm instinctively flung out toward Hardcastle to keep him from flying into the dashboard. "Damn!"

The judge sat up and looked around irritably. "What now?"

"I've only seen one tree up close in the entire time since we left San Miguel, and darned if it hasn't come down right across the road." It was only an ancient live oak, a little on the stubby side, but it was enough to completely block the road without providing any leeway at all, thanks to the depth of the ditches on either side. If they had been in the truck, there would have been no problem in pulling off the road and driving around it, but the Edsel was another story entirely. McCormick was beyond the point of hitting his head against the steering wheel; the only thing that would have relieved his frustration now would have been to take the Edsel out into a field, spray it with gasoline, and toss a match. He turned to look at Hardcastle. "Well, what do we do now, Hardcase? Go back, or try to find another way?"

The judge already had the flashlight out, shining it on the same folded section of map. "According to this thing, there's not another way. The only side road is still about a mile ahead."

McCormick thought for a minute. "I think I remember a gravel road going off to the left. It had a stop sign, so it must be some sort of county road – what I mean is, it didn't look like a driveway or anything like that."

"May as well take a look."

McCormick silently made a U-turn and headed back the way they had come. In a couple of miles, they came to the road he had noticed earlier. He slowed the car down so they could get a closer view of what appeared to be no more than a country lane, dotted by numerous puddles that bore mute evidence not only of the recent rains, but of the definite unevenness of the road surface.

"Looks more like a cattle track to me," Hardcastle remarked as they stared out the window, McCormick leaning forward against the steering wheel to get a better view. Hardcastle sighed gustily. "Oh, hell, I give in. Take us back to San Miguel, and we'll see what kind of motel we can find. No sense in roaming around all over central California, just because I want to go home."

"Good thing I packed us a bag." As McCormick put the car in gear, he caught a glimpse of Hardcastle, staring at him in surprised exasperation. "Look, Judge, the way you were last night, I wasn't all that sure we'd be coming home tonight, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry. If it makes you feel any better," McCormick continued, his grin fading as he cast a commiserating glance toward his passenger, "I wanted to get home tonight, too."

"Well, it's not like this is any of your fault," Hardcastle replied dismally as he slumped despondently in his seat. "C'mon, let's go on back."

But five minutes later, McCormick slowed to a stop once more. "I don't believe this!"

This stretch of road was very similar to the one where the tree had fallen, only this part was graced by a rather elderly concrete bridge, built over a ditch that might normally have contained a small creek but which now boasted a rather sizeable rush of water. McCormick had been driving the Edsel at a sedate fifty-five miles an hour when the car's bright beam picked up something odd about that bridge, a narrow fissure near its center that he was quite certain had not been there before. Obviously during the time since they'd passed by here earlier, something had caused the bridge to crack from side to side, right across the middle; it wasn't a very sizeable crack as cracks go, but it was large enough that McCormick had no intention of driving two tons of expensive automobile back across it – to say nothing of himself and the judge.

Hardcastle began to look a little thoughtful. "You haven't noticed anything a little, uh, strange while you've been driving, have you?"

McCormick was looking rather thoughtful himself. "Nooo ... although there were a few times it seemed like the front-end was going out on me, or maybe a tire going down. Kinda rough, hard to hold. Never lasted more than a second or two, though. I thought it was just the car."

The men looked at each other in silent appraisal. Then McCormick said reluctantly, "I guess this means we go back to that little dirt road, huh."

"I don't know what other choice we have. The map didn't show any other main roads around here, and it's not like there's been all that much traffic." Hardcastle didn't mention that he was beginning to have a notion as to just _why_ there had been so little traffic on Vineyard Canyon Road tonight.

McCormick made yet another U-turn. "They just better have some signs further on to show us where we're going. Otherwise, the next stop might be Fresno."

"Nope," answered Hardcastle with a strained grin, "Got bad news for you, kiddo. The next stop would probably be I-5."

McCormick snorted in response as he drove back to the sketchily gravelled road and turned left, and as Hardcastle snuggled under his overcoat once more, the car began to move along the bumpy surface. McCormick drove as carefully as he could, but the occasional sharp intake of breath from the passenger seat showed that each bounce only made the judge that much more miserable.

McCormick had driven slowly along the deserted, hilly road for another five miles or so, when suddenly he felt the steering wheel shiver in his hands, the tires skittering wildly on the surface of the road as the moonlit landscape blurred and quivered for a few brief moments. Then the sensation was gone as quickly as it had appeared, so that McCormick would have thought he had imagined the whole thing if it hadn't been for that toppled tree and the cracked bridge back on the main road. He glanced across at Hardcastle, but the judge still slept beneath his overcoat, slumped awkwardly against the passenger door, his unfastened safety belt still hanging loosely across the seat.

Shrugging, McCormick drove on, wondering if the long hours were finally beginning to catch up to him. But less than a minute later, the wheel suddenly spun against his grip, and he slammed on brakes, staring in horror through the windshield. The road before him seemed to be undulating violently, the few pines that dotted the landscape swaying back and forth, almost pirouetting in the moonlight like ghostly ballerinas in a fantastic ballet. The car was shaking as well, caught up in the constant motion of the road, like a raft negotiating a particularly aggressive span of rapids, and there was a loud rumbling sound, almost like a continual rolling thunder. He became aware of Hardcastle to his right, one hand braced against the dash, yelling to him; he caught something about 'quake', but he was clinging desperately to the steering wheel, concentrating on regaining control of the car, and he could not reply.

All at once the motion stopped, and in its place came a strange leaden silence. McCormick still held the wheel with what amounted to a death grip, breathing so heavily that he wondered if he were hyperventilating. He looked over towards Hardcastle, who was leaned forward, clutching his stomach; his face was a ghastly white in the moonlight, and McCormick could see his throat move as he swallowed repeatedly, apparently trying to force down an onset of nausea. Without a second thought, McCormick reached across to grasp his shoulder, saying shakily, "Are you all right?"

Hardcastle took a deep breath and tried to straighten, bringing a trembling hand up to wipe the sweat from his brow. "No," he replied with blunt honesty. "It hurts like hell, and I'm gonna be sick."

"Not in the car!" was McCormick's immediate and anguished rejoinder; the next moment, he could have crawled under the car in his mortification, but he relaxed at the soft rumble of laughter coming from the passenger seat.

"Okay, McCormick," the judge said with a somewhat green-tinged grin, as he moved to open the door, "I get the point. No barfing in the Edsel."

"Just _wait_ a minute, dammit," McCormick replied in alarm, scrambling out his door; but his feet had hardly touched the ground before he was clinging for dear life to the roof, his legs threatening to give way beneath him.

Hardcastle, already out of the car, turned to stare at him as though he'd grown another nose. "What's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothing," McCormick replied nonchalantly, his voice a little breathless, "I just can't seem to keep my feet under me, is all."

"Delayed reaction," Hardcastle nodded sagely. "Don't tell me this was your first one."

McCormick didn't reply at once, but carefully pulled himself along and around the door, then to the front of the car, finally dropping facedown across the hood in relief. "No," came his muffled voice in belated response. "But it's the first time I ever got caught in one out on a deserted road in the middle of the night, in a place I've never been before, driving on a beat-up road in an expensive car that doesn't belong to me, with a man who's sicker than any dog I've every known." He lifted his head slightly, a crooked smile on his white lips. "Kinda ups the ante, if you know what I mean."

Laying his head back down for a few moments, McCormick tried to catch his breath, before wearily pulling himself up and coming around the car to Hardcastle's side. Together they crossed the road toward a tangle of bushes strategically placed near the edge of a small, shallow ravine. When the judge tried to shake off the hand that had taken firm grasp of his arm, the grasp just became tighter, only letting go as they came to a break in the dense foliage.

Hardcastle disappeared behind the brush, but the only sounds to issue forth were a series of dry heaves, and McCormick wondered, not for the first time, just when the judge had last eaten. After a brief interval, during which an entirely different, if equally recognizable, noise was heard, Hardcastle was back, and with an inquiring eyebrow, he gestured back toward the brambles. "Might be awhile before we see the next bathroom, hotshot."

"Got news for you, Judge," McCormick replied as he headed hurriedly toward the bushes. "It's already been way too long since we saw the last one!"

Five minutes later, they were back at the car, both men feeling a certain amount of relief in one regard at least, but well aware that in others, things were beginning to look pretty dismal. McCormick began to open the door for Hardcastle, but then paused, looking at him in uncertainty. Finally he said, "Judge, why don't you lie down on the back seat? You'd be a lot more comfortable there." Then he waited for the inevitable explosion about how Hardcastle was perfectly capable of sitting in the front seat, thank you, and get the hell out of my way and lemme sit down.

The fact that no such explosion came was the clearest indicator yet of just how badly Hardcastle felt, and when the judge obediently and without comment clambered stiffly into the back seat, McCormick wanted to lay his head against the roof and weep. But instead, he swallowed, gritted his teeth, and walked around to the back of the car, where he opened the trunk and removed a pillow and a blanket. Slamming the trunk closed again, he brought the items back to the passenger door and tossed them to Hardcastle, who was maneuvering around on the seat, trying to find a comfortable position. He glanced at McCormick in surprise. "Hey, where'd you get this stuff?"

Too tired for elaborate explanations about how he'd swiped them from the den that morning on his way to the rental car place, McCormick muttered a brief, "They came with the car." As he arranged the blanket over Hardcastle and helped him position the pillow under his head, he was aware of Hardcastle's sidelong, measuring glance, but decided to let it go. "Judge, try to get some sleep, okay?"

Hardcastle stared at McCormick, pausing from his futile attempt to pound a little softness into the flat pillow. "Whaddaya mean, try to get some sleep? I've been sleeping almost nonstop since we left Vallejo!"

"No, you haven't. You've been lying there with your eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, just so you could catch me playing with the radar detector!"

"Yeah, and I was right, wasn't I? You couldn't wait to take a crack at it once you thought for sure I was out of it." Even in the dim light from the overhead dome lamp, there was a definite twinkle to be seen in the blue eyes that watched him quizzically, and despite his worry, McCormick could not prevent a slight smile in reply. But after Hardcastle was settled as comfortably as could be hoped for, his overcoat laid carefully over the warm blanket, McCormick walked around the front of the car and slid wearily into the front seat, the smile once more lapsing into what was rapidly becoming a perpetually worried frown.

Praying silently for better luck than they had experienced up to this point, he put the car in gear and nervously ventured forward. Suddenly he found himself thankful that he was of a generation old enough to remember when starters and dimmer switches sat on the floorboard, and almost everything else was operated by a knob on the dash, so that at least the car itself held no real surprises for him. He only wished he could say the same for the little dirt road they now traveled, although it seemed in no worse condition than it had before, and so he pressed against the accelerator a little harder, until they were bumping along at a red hot forty-five miles per hour.

McCormick slowed dramatically when the bright beams of the headlights showed a long wooden bridge up ahead, and he pulled to a stop, with a vivid memory of the concrete bridge they had left only an hour or so before. Frowning, he reached over and pulled the flashlight from the glove compartment; then, leaving the car parked and the motor running, he walked to the edge of the bridge and examined its entire length closely with the light. Seeing nothing to indicate that the structure was any less solid than it appeared to be, he returned to the car and replaced the flashlight in the glove compartment. Then, taking a deep breath, he put the car in gear and cautiously edged the vehicle out onto the old wooden slats. Looking through the window on his left, he could see a rather impressive stream down below, glimmering in the moonlight, a lot further down than he cared to think about. But they crossed without incident, and he released his pent-up breath in a sigh of relief as the front wheels began to roll onto the solid ground that anchored the far side of the bridge.

It was a total shock when, with absolutely no warning, the bridge suddenly disintegrated beneath the car, disappearing in a cascade of wood and rubble. The Edsel hung suspended in the air for a moment before the rear end swung forward to crash heavily against the embankment; then the car began sliding down the steep stone walls, its passage marked by an eerie screech of tortured metal against solid rock. Reaching the bottom of the bank with a violent crash, the car teetered precariously on its bumper before slamming backwards onto its roof, a well-placed assortment of rock fragments barely preventing its submersion into the rain-swollen river.

But McCormick never heard the scream of metal, or felt the impact of the car landing upside down in a mélange of water, debris, and mud. Just as the Edsel crashed hard against the stone cliff, he had become momentarily aware of something small and solid flying directly at his head, followed by an excruciatingly brilliant flash of white light that ripped through his brain as though borne on the blade of a rapier. He was already collapsed back against the seat, without one coherent thought to accompany him to a bottomless oblivion, even as the car and its passengers began their precipitous and uncompromising descent toward the river that waited far below.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

It was the pain that woke Hardcastle, and even in those first few moments of consciousness, he thought that fact ironic, as it had probably been the pain that had caused him to pass out in the first place. God, how it _hurt_, and it wasn't only his belly now, although he couldn't understand just yet _why_ the right side of his chest hurt so badly; broken ribs without a doubt, at least two if not more, but how had they come to be broken? He happened to be lying on that side – of course, that _would_ be the side that gave him some relief from the abdominal pain – so he rolled to his back, and the agony the movement kindled almost caused him to pass out again.

He was cold, too; it was bitterly cold, wherever he was right now, and he had no idea where his overcoat had gone. He lay still, breathing heavily, eyes closed tightly as he tried to gather himself together. Then he opened his eyes to a darkness so intense that if it had not been for the luminous dial of his wristwatch barely visible at his side, he might have thought he'd been blinded.

Feeling dazed and bewildered, he struggled to herd together scattered fragments of memory, trying to figure out why he now found himself sprawled on some sort of silky material that did nothing to disguise the hardness of the surface beneath, when only a few minutes ago he'd been lying under his overcoat on the back seat of the Edsel, head resting against the pillow McCormick had miraculously produced out of the trunk. His last clear remembrance was feeling the gentle bump of tires as McCormick had carefully eased the Edsel across a long old wooden bridge, the kind he remembered all too well from his Arkansas childhood. Bridges such as those were to be found on old back roads across the country, crossing constantly flowing streams of water that had carved deep paths for themselves over the hundreds of years of their existence, although it had seemed odd to come across one here in the middle of modern California.

Hardcastle had been wide awake by the time they had reached the bridge, curled on his right side because the pain wasn't as pronounced in that position. Still, he was completely unprepared when, just as it seemed they were finally to the other side, the bridge had suddenly collapsed beneath them. He remembered hearing McCormick cry out a terrified, "_Oh, my God, Judge, look out!_" just before he himself began rolling onto the seat back in an abrupt slide toward the rear window. Instinctively he'd grabbed for the underside of the seat, clinging tightly for fear that the glass would give way under his weight if he allowed himself to fall that far.

His grip had held as the car had come crashing against the side of the riverbank – a very deep riverbank, or so it seemed, as the car had become completely perpendicular, hanging only by the front wheelbase that had barely cleared the bridge before disaster struck. Then, slowly, the car slid down the bank for what seemed like forever, picking up speed in obvious freefall until it crashed to a sudden bone-breaking stop, so brutal in its violence that, despite the padded cushioning on which he still lay, he felt a sudden searing stitch in his side and a violent rekindling of the pain in his abdomen. His fingers lost their grip and he began sliding helplessly toward the glass, but now the car was falling, falling, crashing backwards down with a splash into water rushing over rocks and sand, so that he rolled right across the glass and onto the upended roof. And that was where his memories ended, in a swirling mist of terrible pain and uncomprehending terror ...

But now his mind was clear, with a complete recollection of where he was and how he had come to be there, and immediately he was overwhelmed with an alarm every bit as intense as his unrelenting pain. _Where was McCormick? _He lay still, listening, but there was no sound that could not be accounted for by natural elements: the strangely muted rushing of river water, overhead a fierce staccato tapping on metal that, he suddenly realized, could only be the pounding of rain. When had that begun? He had a memory, just before the car had crashed, of a full moon surrounded by a few clouds, silver-lined in the moonlight, visible through the back window on the driver's side. Just how long _had_ he been unconscious? How long had it been raining, and just what effect would it have on the river they were currently trapped in? And _where the hell was McCormick?_

Tentatively he called out in a gentle whisper, because that was as loud as he thought he could handle right now, "Kiddo?" There was no answer but the rushing water and the falling rain. He tried again, a little louder, "McCormick?" Still no answer, so that he lifted his head, becoming aware of an incipient headache, and tried once more, somehow mustering up the strength to make it a full-fledged yell, "_McCormick!_" But his voice was the only human sound to be heard.

He laid his head back again, conscious of a faint aroma of gasoline, and he wondered if that might be the source of his headache. He brought his watch up and focused on the hour and minute hands that both stood straight up, one in almost perfect alignment with the other: midnight. So he had been out almost ... _an hour_? Shaken, he realized there were still a few pieces missing, for surely the pain alone could not have kept him unconscious for that length of time.

Ah, well, it didn't matter, he was awake now, and he had things to do, if only he could make his beat-up, pain-filled body cooperate. First of all, he had to find McCormick. With that thought lodged firmly in his mind, he thought about his next step. Finally, with a vague plan of action in place, he remained on his back – he didn't think there was any way he could do this on his belly – as he brought his feet up and slowly began to push himself toward the front of the car, his hands trying to find some sort of purchase against the smooth material of the headliner on which he lay. He was alarmed to feel the roof shift beneath him, a slight swaying motion that revealed just how precarious their anchorage actually was, but he shoved that knowledge to the back of his mind. He had no time for that now.

He had been lying crossways, in alignment with the seats overhead, with his head away from the driver's side of the car, and he had to angle a bit as he painfully wriggled his way backwards toward the area below the front seat, a thin film of sweat beginning to coat his forehead. Almost immediately he came to a stop as his right hand, scrabbling blindly for a handhold, hit something solid that seemed to sway a little at the sudden contact. Cautiously groping, he touched something relatively smooth, its surface a little gritty against his fingertips, and reluctantly he brought his hand up and around the unknown object, only to discover that it was too wide to be encircled within his grasp. There was a slightly nubby texture to the side beneath his fingers, and his heart came up in his throat as he realized just what he was holding: a leather shoe, hanging loosely beside him with the toe caught against a fold in the headliner, the dead weight of the foot it encased keeping it more or less secured.

Sickened and appalled, Hardcastle released the shoe, his heart pounding against his ribs as he tried to absorb this unnerving discovery. He steadied his breathing, sternly reminding himself that he had once been a traffic cop, a professional at this sort of thing, although it had been at least twenty-five years since he had had to crawl into overturned wreckage to check for survivors. He had found them, too, more often than not, and he told himself firmly that there was no reason to panic at this point, despite the disturbing memories that had immediately crowded into his mind at his first recognition of what the shoe signified.

Grimly forcing himself to remain calm and detached, he once again began to inch his body toward the driver's side of the car. He had only moved a few inches when something brushed against his face; he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he reached for this new discovery, already knowing what he would find: a hand, its curled fingers just brushing the roof beside his head, attached to an arm dangling limply from somewhere overhead, still clad in a jacket sleeve that Hardcastle could see in his mind's eye even now, in a discreetly-patterned dark gray.

That's when his detachment deserted him once and for all – or at least, that's when it should have. But Hardcastle was made of sterner stuff than that; for McCormick's sake alone, he could not afford to let himself fall apart now. Moving forward a few inches so that the arm hung suspended directly beside his chest, he slid his hand down the sleeve until it came to rest against the bare flesh of a wrist. Hardcastle took a deep breath as his fingers searched delicately, fearfully, for a pulse – and he nearly passed out with relief upon finding one, strong and regular, beating steadily against his fingertips.

Swallowing with difficulty, Hardcastle brought his other hand up, casting around in the frigid air until his fingers connected with a mass of curls, where they remained entangled for a few brief seconds as Hardcastle grimly tamped down his emotions. Then the gently probing fingers followed the hair toward the flesh of the forehead, stopping as they came across a lump the size of an egg somewhere above McCormick's right eye.

Hardcastle brought his hand down abruptly, and thought hard for a minute. Then he took the hand that still hung limply beside him and pushed up the sleeves of both jacket and shirt, the shirt cuff button popping off in the process. He gripped the forearm tightly, and with his other hand, he took a substantial portion of flesh and pinched as hard as he could, his fingernails digging deeply into the skin and underlying muscle. There was a definite flinching, an involuntary reaction to the sensation of pain, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Then, sliding back to his earlier position, he tried the same test on the leg hanging there, with similar results. He rested for a minute, panting, as he gathered his strength; now that he had some idea of what he was dealing with, it was time he moved on to the main event.

He laid his head back against the headliner, thoughtfully considering what his next move should be. It was clear that McCormick was trapped in his lap belt, bent double from the waist, hanging down as dead weight from the driver's seat. Hardcastle's own admittedly unreliable testing seemed to indicate no obvious back or neck injuries, but without any light, there was no way to be sure about other damage, such as broken bones or cuts. Still, he had felt no signs of dampness, as might be expected with any bleeding, and everything _seemed_ to be in one piece. None of it really mattered anyway, since McCormick had to come down _now_, regardless of any injuries, hidden or otherwise, that he might have sustained. He'd been in that position for far too long already.

Hardcastle swallowed once more, this time in anticipation of an extremely unpleasant thirty minutes or so, and carefully positioned himself so that he was lying directly beneath the area between the front seat and the dash – or at least where that area must be, judging by where McCormick's body was hanging. It was all so difficult, trying to maneuver in the darkness like this, when even the slightest movement produced more spasms of intense, increasingly lancet-like pain. He was just about to vent his frustration in strong and colorful invective, when the line came into his mind about how it was better to light a candle than curse the darkness. And then he remembered the flashlight in the glove compartment.

As far as Hardcastle was concerned, both candle and darkness could be cursed if the circumstances warranted, and a single exasperated "Dammit!" echoed through the car's interior as he began the tedious process of sliding himself closer to the other end of the dashboard. Rolling to his left side, he stretched his right arm toward where he estimated the windshield to be, and was startled to find his hand going straight through to land against cold, solid, rain-lashed rock. He began to feel around, carefully negotiating his way around jagged, broken pieces of glass that rimmed the windshield's metal lining. Reaching down past the edge of the lining, he found his hand plunging into icy cold water, lapping freely just below the edge of the upturned roof. There could be no more than a few inches clearance between the water and the roof of the car, which bode them no good if the river should rise above its current level.

Heaving a depressed sigh, he dried his hand against his shirt, then rolled onto his back and reached up with both hands to where he was reasonably sure the glove compartment was located, ignoring with difficulty the protests both his ribs and his stomach were making at the effort. He found the latch, carefully releasing it so that its contents would not escape through the broken windshield and into the water, and reached in for the flashlight, still wrapped in the folded map. Tossing the map toward the back of the car, he flicked on the flashlight, aiming its reassuringly strong beam up to where an unconscious McCormick dangled from his unyielding restraint.

Hardcastle studied him carefully, the way his jacket had become twisted in and around the seat belt so that the latch was nowhere to be seen, the almost blood-red flush that suffused his swollen face as a result of his head being suspended beneath his body for such a long period of time. Then Hardcastle reached into his pocket and fished out his Swiss Army knife, thankful that it had not been lost during the accident. He winced at the motion, and then set his mouth into a grim line; that was the last time he could afford to think about the pain. No doubt this was going to hurt, what he was about to do, but he could only allow it to affect him once he had McCormick safely free and down, not before. Finally, with great deliberation, he lay down the flashlight and began to roll himself over and up onto his knees.

Hardcastle could not later recall just how he had managed to accomplish what he did. He did remember making it to his knees, his head in firm contact with the seat above him. He remembered trying to hold McCormick's upper body against the seat so that he would not fall headfirst when he was released from his nylon-and-metal restraints. He remembered the way the power cord from the radar detector had inexplicably become entwined in the seat belt, the detector itself swinging to and fro between them. He remembered a curly head lolling helplessly against his shoulder as he reached up to cut the seat belt. Finally, he could remember McCormick's limp body slamming down against him, an explosion of agonizing pain, an impression that he was falling a great distance – and nothing more, for a long, long time.

When he came again to his senses, he was on his left side, his overcoat pulled haphazardly across his body. He hurt dreadfully, but not as badly as when McCormick had collapsed into him; after a few minutes spent in regaining a tenuous self-control, he was able to take note of his surroundings. He became aware of the flashlight that lay beneath his right hand, and he picked it up, tentatively sliding the switch forward and wondering as he did so just when he'd had the sense to turn it off. To his surprise, the flashlight shone full strength; he aimed it in the direction he was facing – and there, clearly illuminated in its beam, was McCormick.

It was as it had been the night before, when he had discovered McCormick sitting against all expectation in the desk chair in the den at home. The difference, of course, was that this time, McCormick was unconscious, lying on his back near where the back glass met the roof, his head slightly turned toward the front of the car. The blanket he had retrieved from the car trunk hours ago had been carelessly flung over him, and the pillow on which his head lay was slightly askew, but at least he was warm, and dry, and well out of harm's way, for now at least. He could only have arrived at his makeshift bed through Hardcastle's own efforts, a feat so unbelievable that it seemed to Hardcastle nothing short of a miracle.

Hardcastle took a few minutes to scrutinize his friend, noting the gentle rise and fall of his chest; the drawn paleness of his face, so different from that swollen ruddiness of before; the darkening bruised-looking knot plainly visible over his right eye. There was a sudden spark of memory, the frightening dream from the night before, complete with red shards and trailing red and blue streams of light, but there were still no signs of cuts or blood on McCormick's face, or anywhere else on his body, as far as Hardcastle could see from such a cursory examination. At least slightly reassured by what he had observed in the beam of the flashlight, Hardcastle turned it off and closed his eyes, the intense pain he experienced now fighting a losing battle against the comfort of knowing that, no matter what happened next, at least at this point in time they were somehow still alive, still in one piece, and still together.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

McCormick awoke to a piercing pain just over his right eye that seemed to be spreading clear across the rest of his brain, along with a sense of something being not quite right. Cautiously he opened his eyes to see ... nothing. It was pitch black, wherever he was. Trying to take stock without moving his head unnecessarily, he peered around from the corners of his eyes, but there was still total darkness, and he wondered in alarm if he had been struck blind. He was lying flat on his back against some hard, unyielding surface, covered by a blanket whose warmth was in stark contrast to the intensely cold temperature, and his head lay on some soft, indefinable object – a pillow? The only sounds to be heard were the steady rat-a-tat of raindrops against metal, the muted gurgling of nearby rushing water, and a soft labored wheezing somewhere to his right.

McCormick's heart caught at the sound of that hitched breathing, and automatically he jerked up in panicked fear, the sudden movement sending hot burning daggers through his brain. As he cried out and slumped back down against that hard surface, the gentle wheezing changed to a startled gasp, and he felt a warm, almost hot hand firm against his right shoulder, holding him down. Then he heard Hardcastle say softly, "Shh. Just lie still for a minute, okay? You got creamed pretty good there."

Even with the throbbing in his head, McCormick was aware of an overwhelming relief at the sound of Hardcastle's voice, weak but steady, and incredibly comforting. Sighing, he allowed himself to sink back, content to obey orders, if only long enough to calm the shrapnel that rattled chaotically throughout his battered skull. When he finally thought he could speak without throwing up, he asked in a whisper, "What hit me?"

There was a slight chuckle. "It looks like you got clobbered by that radar detector you're so crazy about. The cord was damn near wrapped around you. See, serves ya right for using that thing when you thought I wasn't lookin'."

McCormick tried to process that information, but it made no sense to his scrambled brain.

"What happened?" he asked, resolutely ignoring the pins and needles in his head that vied for attention every time he opened his mouth.

"We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, kiddo. Don't you remember?"

"No." There was a short pause, then McCormick continued in a slightly scared voice. "Did we get to San Francisco?"

There was a long silence. "Sure we did, kid," answered Hardcastle at last, his voice strangely noncommittal. "And we made it through the funeral, and Stella was real glad to see us. Then we got caught in a traffic jam on Highway 101 on the way home, and we tried to find a short cut, and drove right into a little earthquake along the way. We made it through _that_ okay, but then we got caught in what you might call an unexpected aftereffect."

It struck McCormick that Hardcastle's terse description condensed to an amazing degree what must have been an extremely unusual day, but he made no comment as the judge continued calmly, "So now we're upside down right at the edge of some river, along with most of a bridge from some Godforsaken road, I _think_ somewhere in Monterey County, and if it keeps raining the way it has been, there's a chance we'll be finding out where that river goes long before the sun comes up."

McCormick thought about that for a few minutes. Upside down? Then they both must be lying on the lining of the roof itself.

"How long have I been out?"

Hardcastle answered slowly, "It's been awhile. I was getting a little worried that maybe that head of yours wasn't quite as hard as I thought." McCormick heard the judge clear his throat, the action sounding a little more strained than usual, then he continued, "You were caught in your seat belt, hanging down like a side of beef, and I had to cut it with my pocketknife, 'cause I couldn't get to the latch. Sorry 'bout that, kiddo, but I'll make it good with Jack." There was genuine remorse in Hardcastle's voice, as though he really did regret having to cut that vintage – and probably extremely expensive – seatbelt. "At least I managed to get you down and laid out without your head getting bounced around a second time. With you up there and me down here, that was about as good as I could do. I didn't try the doors, but they must be jammed pretty tight; they look a little crumpled to me. I don't know where the rain came from," he added gloomily. "Last time I looked, there was hardly a cloud in the sky, but then, that was about three hours ago, when the car was still right side up."

Very, very carefully, McCormick turned his head to the right and tried to peer at Hardcastle, but there wasn't enough light to show more than an indeterminate outline, and even that might have been an illusion.

"Are you okay?"

There was another long silence.

"Sure," Hardcastle answered with a false cheerfulness that seemed to grate on McCormick's ears. McCormick maintained a stony silence, until the judge finally sighed and said, "Okay, maybe I'm not doing all that hot. Still, if it hadn't been for that speed detector thing comin' loose, I expect we both woulda come out of this okay. As for that other stuff," Hardcastle added ruefully, "I guess there's nothing like a good, old-fashioned earthquake to take your mind off your troubles."

Condensed didn't even begin to describe it, McCormick thought grimly, as he tried to force his headache to retreat into the background. In the lengthy silence that followed, he was surprised to discover his memory returning; he could recall their arrival in San Miguel and even beyond that, although he still could remember nothing about the quake itself or what came afterwards.

Along with his memories came renewed worry for Hardcastle, whose dispassionate narrative hadn't deceived McCormick in the slightest. As he lay still, he tried to assess the judge's condition by listening alone, since it was much too dark for a visual evaluation. Hardcastle himself seemed less than willing to part with any specifics, and McCormick was reasonably sure than any effort at movement on _his_ part would result in an extremely unsavory upchucking, definitely not something to be encouraged in a closely confined space such as the interior of a wrecked car.

Gradually his efforts in auditory diagnosis were rewarded, once he learned to discount the sounds of river and rain. He once more heard the catch in the judge's breathing, a hesitancy in its rhythm that might mean broken ribs, although Hardcastle had begun to develop an irregularity in his breathing long before their unplanned descent into this river. There were sounds of restlessness, and he could hear Hardcastle constantly swallowing in an effort to contain the pain, or the nausea, or perhaps both.

Sometimes there was a sharp, stifled gasp, as though the bouts of severe pain were coming more often now, and the hand that had rested against his shoulder had radiated an abnormal warmth even through his own jacket and shirt, indicating all too plainly that the fever was still present. Taken together, the evidence pointed to a very sick man, who undoubtedly needed medical attention soon, probably far sooner than it was likely to become available.

His bleak reflections were interrupted by Hardcastle, who asked in a deceptively casual tone, "I wonder exactly where we are right now?"

"A hundred and fifty miles from nowhere, where else would we be?" McCormick replied bitterly, vowing to himself that next time he put his foot down, it would stay down, despite Hardcastle's undeniable penchant for pulling the rug right out from under it.

"Nah, we can't be that far from civilization," Hardcastle replied optimistically. "This is central California."

McCormick glanced down past his feet and over toward where he thought the top of the driver's side door might be located. "What was it you said about the doors?" he asked, his voice sounding unexpectedly dull and listless even to his own ears, as though he didn't give a damn one way or another about the doors. He gritted his teeth in self-reproach; now just wasn't the time for one of his Patented McCormick Attitude Attacks, and Hardcastle certainly didn't need any more discouragement than he was undoubtedly already feeling, despite his determined stab at some sort of normalcy. A thought struck McCormick, and his spirits began insensibly to rise. "Wait a minute. Whaddaya mean, the doors look crumpled? If you can't see 'em, how can you tell?"

"'Cause I've got the flashlight right here. And believe me, kiddo, if there's a way out of here, those doors aren't it." There was a small sigh in the darkness, and when Hardcastle spoke, it was with the same somber tones of defeat that had colored McCormick's own voice a few moments earlier. "On the other hand, we aren't exactly in the safest place we could be. It's not like we're sittin' on solid ground."

The judge's words rang a small bell in McCormick's memory, but his head ached too badly for him to pursue the thought; it wasn't as though he really cared all that much about getting out of here right now, with both him and Hardcastle down and out of action for a while. And just what _was_ 'right now', anyway? He fumbled for his watch, but it was missing from his wrist. "Judge, what time is it? My watch is gone."

It seemed the judge's wristwatch with its luminous dial was still intact, as he replied without hesitation, "If I'm reading this right, it's about two a.m." He fell silent for a moment. "You know, I really do wonder just where we are. How's your memory comin' along? It'd be right handy if you remembered noticing any road signs or anything before we took that detour."

"You know, now you mention it, I do remember that right when we got to where the tree fell, I saw a sign saying 'Parkfield, one mile'. I didn't pay much attention 'cause it wasn't like we were ever gonna get to _that_ road." McCormick had turned back onto his right side, as the pain didn't seem quite as intense that way. As he stared in the general direction of the dashboard, or at least where he thought the dashboard should be, he suddenly had an idea. "Look, if you had that map, you think you could figure out where we are? Not that it makes any difference now, but you're right, it'd be nice to know just where we managed to get to before everything went haywire."

"Well, as a matter of fact, I just happen to have it right here." There was a note of not-quite-suppressed self-congratulation in Hardcastle's voice. "I kinda thought we might need it."

There was the sound of rustling paper, followed by a bright glow, faintly illuminating Hardcastle's features as he held the map up with one hand and steadied the flashlight with the other. "Here it is, a few miles off the road we were on. That sign you saw must have meant one mile to the road that goes by it. Parkfield, population ... thirty-four?" There was an amused snort. "Talk about your booming metropolis."

"Yeah." McCormick smiled in the darkness as he watched Hardcastle fiddling with the map; even in this poor light, it was such a relief to see the man himself, rather than having to be content with a disembodied voice. "Wonder what they do for a living around here."

"Isn't Parkfield where they started doing all that earthquake research a couple of years ago?" asked Hardcastle, with a glance at McCormick's shadowed face. "I think I remember reading something about it in the papers."

"Really? Why Parkfield, d'ya suppose?"

"I dunno," Hardcastle answered absently, still studying the map. "Something about them having a big earthquake every twenty years or so, I think."

"Oh, great. No telling how many roads there are in this part of California, and we have to end up on the only one leading to the Earthquake Capitol of the World." McCormick was quiet for a minute. Then he asked hesitantly, "Uh, Judge?"

"What?"

"How strong do you think that earthquake was?"

"So you remember that, too, do ya?" The light disappeared as the judge snapped off the flashlight. "I hate to tell you this, kiddo, but I expect the people in this neck of the woods wouldn't even have considered that one a good tremor. The whole thing didn't last but about ten seconds or so, you know."

"_Ten seconds!_"

"Well, it wasn't the Big One, that's for sure. The experts are saying that these folks probably won't be seeing one like that for another seven or eight years."

"Sheesh, with predictions like that, no wonder the roadmap says, 'Population, thirty-four'!"

0000000000

"You're awfully quiet," McCormick said softly.

"Yeah, well, I thought it might be best to keep a low profile, seein' as I got us into this mess."

"Judge, last night when I was telling you all those things that could go wrong, earthquakes weren't exactly at the top of my list. Tell you what, since you've done your best to keep your end of the bargain, I'll let you off the hook for this one." McCormick fell silent, thinking, then he asked, with no sign of fear in his voice, only a friendly curiosity, "Whatcha think we ought to do? My head doesn't hurt so much now," he lied manfully. "I might be able to find us a way out of here."

"You just might, but y'know, kid, I don't think I've got it in me to climb outta here and walk away, even if we did get a door open – and you sure don't have any business wandering around with a concussion." The roof trembled just the slightest bit beneath them, as Hardcastle sought a more comfortable position. "McCormick, maybe we ought to wait awhile, okay? We don't know where we are, except that I'm pretty sure we're in a river, and I think it's a big one – at least, right now it is, with the rain and everything. We don't know how deep it is, or how fast the current is, or how much of it the car's keeping out. I _think_ we landed on some rocks that are holdin' us up over the water right now, but I might be wrong; it could be that we'd knock out that back window and the river would pour right in before we could get outta here, or the current might sweep us away, car and all. It's dark as hell, so even if we did get out and make it to dry land – dry being relative here, you understand – we still wouldn't have any idea what direction to go in. It's not like it's flat as a pancake out there, and it sure seemed like we were falling a long way from the road."

Hardcastle paused, taking a quick, almost gasping, breath, giving McCormick the worrisome impression that the breathlessness was getting worse. The judge continued, "Look, in here, we have the coat, and the blanket, and the flashlight, and we're out of the rain, and it doesn't look like the car's going anywhere anytime soon. Let's just let it lay for now, okay? You need some rest, and I need some rest, so we'll save the flashlight for when we really need it, and get some sleep. Okay, kiddo?"

"Okay." McCormick's voice faded as he laid his head back against the pillow. There was an exhausted entreaty in Hardcastle's voice that was impossible to resist, despite the danger they were in. His own headache was worsening, too, so that he felt his brain was swelling right into his skull, and he closed his eyes, praying that sleep would give him a respite from the relentless pounding.

0000000000

Perhaps it was the comparative normality of their conversation up to that point that made what happened next so distressing, especially to McCormick, or perhaps because it was so incredibly out of character for him to behave in such a manner. Whatever the reason, years later, McCormick would watch a documentary about brain injuries, or find himself conversing one-on-one with someone who had once suffered a debilitating injury of that nature, and his mind would instantly go back to that relatively short interlude in that dreadfully interminable night, and always his first impulse was to head to a phone and apologize, even long after such apologies – or such phone calls, for that matter – were feasible.

McCormick was dreaming, strange dreams about things that hardly seemed to merit dreaming about, yet even in his dreams his head was pounding like a drum, with such an incredibly painful, pulsating sensation that if he'd been able to think rationally, he would have wondered if there was something more going on in there than simply a bruised brain. As it was, the way his head seemed to increase with each resounding drumbeat throb, the size of his brain mushrooming until he could bear the pressure no longer, all became just a part of the nightmare inside his skull.

Also part of the nightmare was the irrational anger that began to course through his body, escaping from his dream world into his reality, bringing him to his knees and across the couple of feet that separated him from Hardcastle. Grabbing the flashlight that lay between them, he shone it at the judge's face, and it was a measure of Hardcastle's own exhaustion that he never showed the slightest reaction. The judge's eyes were closed, his head pillowed uncomfortably on his own folded sport coat. His face even in sleep was only too expressive of his own pain, and his breathing was so faint that the rise and fall of his chest could hardly be detected.

Under other circumstances, logic might have dictated that the shallow breathing was only the result of broken ribs. But there was no room for logic in McCormick's delirium-fogged brain at that moment, only an unshakeable conviction that Hardcastle was dying, right here and right now, and that just seemed to enrage him, with a fury that he could not remember ever having experienced before. _By damn,_ went the refrain resounding in his imagination, _if the old bastard's gonna buy the farm, we're gonna get this sorted out first, once and for all._

He lay the flashlight on Hardcastle's chest, beam aimed toward the judge's face, and then he leaned hard against the judge's shoulders, deliberately shoving them against the unforgiving surface of the roof until his hands turned white from the pressure, no doubt provoking a reciprocal bruising of the skin and muscles that lay concealed beneath Hardcastle's shirt. As Hardcastle began to moan softly, rolling his head in subconscious reaction to this new pain, McCormick began speaking, softly, dangerously, directly into the judge's face, his voice penetrating through Hardcastle's oblivion, so that the judge's eyes flew open in a surprise turned to shock, as he saw McCormick's feral expression and heard that chillingly level voice. McCormick's words were few, but their impact on both speaker and listener was immediate, although in retrospect, they hardly seemed very intimidating.

"Let me tell you something, Hardcastle. You did get me into this mess, and if you go and die on me now, I'll never forgive you." Somewhere deep inside, the small part of McCormick that wasn't being flattened between a hammer and an anvil wondered helplessly where this was coming from, but he couldn't seem to stop himself. After all, this was just a dream, right? "I'm tired, do you hear me? Tired! I'm sick and tired of having to have things your way, always your way, and you don't give a damn about me or what I want or what I need. I'm fed up, Hardcastle, do you hear me? Fed up! I'm not taking it anymore. No more, Hardcastle! No more!"

Then he pulled his hands into fists, and with a nerve-wracking methodity, he began pounding the roof on either side of Hardcastle's head, over and over again. He began to speak again, his voice pitched so low that he could not hear himself over the throbbing in his head, and he had no idea what he was actually saying – truly the stuff of nightmares.

And then the fists stopped their pounding, McCormick's hands coming to rest limply against his thighs, and there was silence, a thick silence that was almost smothering. He sat back on his haunches, staring blankly at the judge's white, stunned face, before flinging himself back onto his blanket. Wrapping himself up tightly in its warm folds, he turned on his side, away from Hardcastle, and buried his head into the pillow in a subliminal attempt to bury the pain as well.

Awareness had come with the force of his body hitting the roof, and he woke to confusion and a sense that he had done something _bad_ ... he'd hurt Hardcastle, and there was something all wrong with the words he'd said to him ... but he couldn't get a handle on it ... it was just out of reach of his groping memory ... he had to stop, the effort hurt too much, it just _hurt too much _... and then the pain did become too much, and he was gone, back into his dream world once more.

0000000000

The flashlight still lay on Hardcastle's chest, shining on his face, and he had no strength to turn it off – and no desire to either, the light providing an illusion of safety against any further assault by a man who he would never previously have thought to be capable of such a thing. His shoulders ached, his heart seemed caught in his throat, and he would have thrown up if there'd been anything left in his stomach to throw up. And then there was the pain, still rolling in relentless waves across both his stomach and his ribs, an unpleasant souvenir of the rough treatment he had received.

Hardcastle had been quite honestly terrified, seeing the violence building behind the stormy face illuminated by the flashlight – yet there was something that had seemed off kilter. The first words out of the kid's mouth had made sense ... almost ... but there had been something almost empty about the kid's expression, as though he wasn't actually aware of what he was saying, as though he wasn't even _there_. And suddenly Hardcastle knew that McCormick _wasn't_ there, that whatever was going through his head had nothing to do with the here and now, that he was trapped in the middle of some concussion-induced nightmare, with no control whatsoever of his actions.

And then McCormick had begun pounding the roof with his fists, and as Hardcastle wondered almost resignedly when the fists would leave the roof to start in on his face, he had tried to listen to McCormick's almost incoherent mumblings. The kid's words had come faster and faster, slurring together so as to be almost unintelligible – and there was definitely something not ... quite ... right ... there ...

"... I'm so damned tired of walking, walking, walking, all the time walking, and it's dull all the time, no matter what I do, the damn thing won't sharpen, and it blows black stuff, black, black, all the time black, and nothing I do can stop it happening; the damn thing can't be fixed, not by me, not by you, oh, no, can't be that simple, you couldn't go with a damn Briggs and Stratton, any damn fool can fix that ..."

Now, in the aftermath, Hardcastle finally managed to calm his breathing as he tried to make sense of McCormick's angrily delivered diatribe. What was it he had said? Something about always walking? Blowing black stuff? And what _was_ it that was dull all the time, that couldn't be sharpened? And who the hell were Briggs and Stratton, and why would he want to go anywhere with them? A light bulb came on in his head at those names – the kid had said '_a_ Briggs and Stratton'. He hadn't been talking about _guys_, but a _company_; Briggs and Stratton made small engines, like you'd find on outboard motors and chain saws and ...

Hardcastle's eyes widened in astonished comprehension, and his involuntary, hastily stifled laughter had a hysterical ring to it. The whole thing was ridiculous; whoever would have thought the kid would have had nightmares over something so stupid? Who would ever have thought it possible that McCormick would almost beat the crap out of him over a _lawnmower?_

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McCormick woke again to that numbing pain above his right eye and a profound sense that he had screwed up big time, if only he could remember how. He sat up, banging his head against the seat suspended above him, and choked off the cry that came to his lips. He felt around the roof for the flashlight; he knew they'd agreed not to use the light unless it was absolutely necessary, but somehow he felt that right now it _was_ absolutely necessary. He had to find the judge, he had to apologize ... for ... for ... _something_, he just couldn't remember what, and it couldn't wait, it had to be _now_.

But he couldn't find the flashlight, it wasn't where it was supposed to be, right between him and the judge, and then he was pawing desperately for it across the headliner, afflicted with a horrible sense of urgency, yet with a odd feeling that it was too late, too late ... And then he looked over to where he knew the judge had last been, where ... where ... _something_ had happened ... he knew he had to get over there, but just as he tossed aside his blanket, he was stopped cold by the glare of the flashlight, shining directly into his face, so that he could see nothing but the spots that suddenly danced before his eyes.

"Looking for this, sport?"

The flashlight was slowly being lowered, so that the beam hit just below McCormick's chin, and now he could see Hardcastle sitting up, leaning tiredly against the side of the car, holding the flashlight steady in one hand. He knew there was something terribly wrong here, Hardcastle had no business sitting up that way, and he asked in a low, shaking voice, "Are you all right?"

Hardcastle answered quietly, "Yeah, kid, I'm fine." He seemed to be studying McCormick intently, but his expressionless face in the dim light gave McCormick no clue to what he was actually seeing: a white, pathetically frightened face, framed by sweat-dampened tendrils of hair, with huge, pain-filled eyes whose pupils were nevertheless reassuringly equal and reactive to the strong light.

Nodding to himself as if satisfied about something, Hardcastle slid a little closer, wincing as he did so, and placed a light hand across McCormick's forearm. "Don't feel so good, do you, kiddo? Don't you think it might be better if you lay back down?"

"Yeah," McCormick answered quietly, confused and uncertain and hurting, but reassured by the matter-of-factness of Hardcastle's behavior. Yielding to the gentle pressure of the hand on his arm, he lay down, his head resting once more against the pillow as his eyes followed the judge's every movement. "Judge, I'm sorry."

Hardcastle laid aside the flashlight and set about spreading the rumpled blanket across McCormick's shivering body. "Sorry about what?"

"About what I said. I didn't mean it." The scared hesitancy in McCormick's voice spoke volumes about his true ignorance concerning his recent actions.

"No big deal. You were dreaming." There was an inexplicable note of laughter mixed with the pain in Hardcastle's voice. "By the way, tell me, kiddo, just what _did_ you say?"

McCormick thought about that, and answered uncertainly, "I don't know. But whatever it was, it was bad. Real bad. Judge, I'm so _sorry_."

"Nothing to be sorry for. You were just having a bad dream, McCormick. That's all it was, just a bad dream," Hardcastle answered with an irrepressible, if rather strained, grin. Despite his headache and his confusion, McCormick smiled back faintly, enormously relieved, although he didn't quite understand what the judge found so funny about the whole thing.

Relaxing against his pillow, McCormick turned over and closed his eyes, only to have them shoot open again in bewilderment as the judge gave his shoulder one final pat and remarked in an amused voice, "I know it was only the concussion talking, but I gotta admit, McCormick, you sure know how to get your point across. When we get home, we'll go _get_ you your damned Briggs and Stratton."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

As the rain continued to beat down on their metallic shelter, both McCormick and Hardcastle lay on their respective pillows of feather and polyester-blend, huddled beneath their respective coverings of blanket and overcoat, staring out into the darkness, each engrossed in his own thoughts. But their thoughts never even touched on the relative security in which they lay, provided by another unfortunate victim of circumstance, her fate as uncertain as their own, yet another casualty of their little tragedy in the making ...

In her day, the Edsel had truly been the big beauty McCormick had pronounced her to be, the automotive equivalent of a Jane Russell or a Marilyn Monroe. She was still very handsome, despite the rough handling she had endured since she was driven off the showroom floor in 1958. In her nearly thirty years of existence, she had done everything from sweeping a bride and groom to their honeymoon retreat, to shuttling a farmer and his produce to market, and everything in between.

She had been a no-tell motel for a high-school couple too young to understand the consequences of their actions, and the scene of a near-homicide upon the young lady's father discovering their clandestine activities. She had carried millionaires and paupers, transported jewels and hauled hay; there had been times when she was as highly polished as a newly-minted dime, and other times when her paint was so scratched and dirty that one could not even recognize her original color. In the end, she had become fodder for the wrecking yard, neglected and forgotten, stored away in an old building belonging to the next-to-the-last of her four different owners, never again to be the envy of every other vehicle on the highways and byways of America.

She had been rescued from this sad fate by her current owner, who had spotted her at an estate sale and paid a paltry five hundred dollars for a car that, fully restored, would net over a hundred times that amount. She had been refurbished and repainted, her engine restored, and her chrome buffed and burnished until it shone like a diamond in the sunlight. And then her owner had rented her to other people, the wealthy and the not so wealthy, those whose tastes ran to the obscure and unusual, those who sought to revisit their past one more time, those who wanted to experience an era much different from their own. She was considered the Queen of the Classic Car Showroom, the crème de la crème of the collection, and always, _always_, she was treated with courtesy and respect, special consideration given to her advancing years and intrinsic value – always, that is, until now.

For now she lay upside down in this cold damp riverbed, destined to be inundated, completely engulfed in cold, stinking, dirty water. Her roof was hopelessly dented, her doors crushed beyond repair, and the original glass that had graced her windshield was shattered, the shards destined to be potential hazards for the unwary and the bare of foot. Her upholstery, her carpet, her interior trim were all still in pristine shape, but that would surely change come morning, for even now the unusually heavy rain was just beginning to break down a natural dam high in the hills, and when the water found its way through the barriers that impeded it, the river would begin to rise dramatically, so that all that stood in the path of its rushing waters would bear the brunt of that destructive force.

The Edsel was not a sentient being; yet despite the uncompromising metal of which she was constructed, there was still a sense of _feeling_ there, as if she too had been a character in all the drama of life that had been acted out around her. So much had happened within her luxurious interior, laughter, joy, tears, anger, despair, heartache, and all had been absorbed into the fine leather of her upholstery, the soft nap of her carpeting, the silken splendor of her lining. She had been cherished for her role in the lives of those who had inhabited her world, and now the essence of those past associations would go with her on her final journey, whether it be to a rust-encrusted gravesite within the bed of this river, the indignity of the junkyard, or the final devastation of the crushing machine. Regardless of her ultimate fate, her life had been a good one, admirably fulfilling the purpose for which she had been constructed.

And now there were these last two, who lay hurt and confined there on her upended roof, the older a kindred spirit, with the same sense of a life fulfilled, with perhaps a few regrets for the past and limited expectations for the future. The younger one had a special feeling for her, an appreciation of her looks, her history, the period she represented, her longevity, her stamina; and if an inorganic machine were capable of sensate response, she might have thought to herself, _oh, if only I were twenty years younger _...

There had been tragedies witnessed within the privacy of the Edsel's interior, both trivial and tragic – a crying child dripping blood onto the carpet from an insignificant scratch, a former owner stricken with a heart attack, collapsing into the arms of his hysterical wife – and there was no doubt that the older man was far more seriously ill than perhaps his friend realized. His focused eyes revealed his awareness of that fact, as well as his determination to conceal the gravity of his condition from the younger one, whose own pain was obvious in every movement of his curly head and every flicker of his long lashes. The older man's concern for the younger was apparent in the surreptitious repositioning of his makeshift bed, in his struggle to preserve a preternatural calmness, in his patient efforts to convince the younger one to be still and quiet, so that his suffering might be lessened to a more manageable degree.

And it became clear, during the last of those conversations ever to be held within the Edsel's sheltering framework, that the younger man was having none of it.

0000000000

McCormick's voice was low and very troubled.

"Judge?"

"Yeah?"

"I hit you, didn't I?"

There was a taken-aback silence, following by an explosive, "_No_, you didn't _hit_ me!" Then Hardcastle asked in a quieter voice, "Why would you think that?"

"Because I did in my dream. I was hurting you too, you were moaning and everything. I don't know why, I would _never_ ... anyway, I just thought maybe ..."

"Well, you didn't hit me, so just get that idea right out of your head."

"... 'cause, Judge, I'd never _ever_ intentionally do something like that ..."

"I _know_ you wouldn't ..."

"... not that I haven't _thought_ about it once or twice ..."

"McCormick?"

"Yeah?"

"You _might_ wanna think about quitting while you're ahead."

There was a shaky laugh in the darkness. "Judge?"

"McCormick, wouldja just go to sleep? I'll be here to make sure you don't have any more nightmares."

There was a slight whine in the answering, "Okaaaaay ..."

0000000000

"Judge?"

A long-suffering sigh filled the night air. "Yeah, McCormick?"

"I wrecked the Edsel."

Hardcastle's reply had a slightly caustic edge. "I wondered when you were going to notice that."

"But ... an Edsel. Do you realize there are only about a hundred fifty of these things in the entire world?"

"Well, now there are only about a hundred forty-nine. There's nothing we can do about it now."

"But Judge, it's an _Edsel__!"_

"Funny, that's what I said when you drove up in this thing."

"Ha. Ha."

"McCormick, just relax, okay? It's not like you didn't get insurance."

"Yeah ... uh, Judge?" The nervousness in McCormick's voice was obvious.

"What?"

"Aren't earthquakes considered Acts of God?"

"Usually."

"And don't insurance companies usually exclude Acts of God?"

"Usually."

McCormick uttered a heartfelt cry. "Oh, my God!"

"_Relax_, McCormick, you got an earthquake rider, I read it. _Now _will you go to sleep?"

"But, Judge ..."

"_Sleep_, McCormick. _Now_."

0000000000

"Judge?"

After a short silence, Hardcastle answered evenly. "Yeah, McCormick."

"What do you suppose woulda happened if I'd stayed in Daytona?"

"You probably would've gotten a phone call at your hotel telling you I was in some emergency room in San Francisco, or I might've made it all the way back to L.A. before I folded. I wasn't gonna drive myself, you know, I really was gonna take the train. I might be stupid, but I'm not _that_ stupid."

"We shouldn't have come at all."

"I _know_ that." Hardcastle's voice was beginning to get a little testy. "Now wouldja just _shut up_ and _go to sleep_?"

"All right, Judge, if you say so. But I'm not very sleepy."

0000000000

"Judge?"

Hardcastle's voice took on a slight exasperation. "_Yes_, McCormick."

"Aren't you mad at me?"

"I gotta admit, the temper's beginning to slide a little, but I expect it's not for the same reason you think it is. Any particular reason _you_ think I ought to be mad at you?"

"Well, we're lost on some deserted road, sunk in a river in a demolished car worth seventy grand, you're sick and I'm sick, and there's no way to get help. Sound like good enough reasons for you?"

The answer was calm and decisive. "We. Are. Not. Lost."

A snicker sounded in the darkness. "Okay, Kemosabe, whatever you say. But we never did find the right road. It just seems weird, you not yelling at me."

"Well, you're not exactly up to your usual standard of repartee either."

"I guess you're right there." Despite himself, McCormick could not quite suppress the pain that laced every word.

"_McCormick _..."

"I know, I know. Shut up and go to sleep."

0000000000

"Judge?"

"_McCormick_ ..."

"Please, Judge? I'm scared to go to sleep, and it hurts too bad anyway."

"And you think _talking_ is gonna make it feel better?"

"No ... but at least when _you're_ talking, I'm not worrying about why you're _not_ talking." The pause that followed had an almost apologetic quality. "Judge, I know you're hurting too, and you wanna go to sleep, but it's not that long 'til dawn, and I promise, once we get outta here, I'll let you sleep 'til the cows come home."

"Not too many cows in Malibu, McCormick."

"So ... you'll get to sleep awhile." There was a sudden panicked note in McCormick's voice. "Not _too_ long, though!"

Exhaustion and pain suffused Hardcastle's own voice, but nevertheless, he replied, "Okay, McCormick, we'll talk for a while. Whatcha want to talk about?"

"Oh, I don't know."

There was an amused snort. "McCormick, go to sleep."

0000000000

"Judge?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think Sonny might have been in the service?"

"I dunno, kiddo. Why don't you ask him?"

"I don't know, it just seems ... personal."

"McCormick, you're his son. That gives you the right to ask personal questions. Doesn't always mean you have the right to get an answer, but you can ask, anyway. He should understand; kids always want to hear those old war stories."

"I wouldn't mind hearing about yours."

"Yeah, well, mine would probably be better'n his anyway."

"I wonder where he is right now."

"Last card you got said Branson, didn't it?"

"Yeah." McCormick sounded a little bemused. "I wonder what on earth he's doing in _Missouri_."

"Branson's getting to be a big deal, kiddo, even the popular singers are checking it out. More and more little music theaters going up every day." Despite his pain, there was a smile in Hardcastle's voice. "Might even do him good, somewhere like that, families, senior citizens, church groups, folks like that. Probably not a mobster to be found."

"Families and church groups, huh?"

"Well, I expect it's the seniors he'd appeal to, but you know, McCormick, he's really not a bad singer. The blue hairs'll just eat him up."

"Yeah ..."

The silence that followed was a friendly one, introspective on either side, so it was a little unsettling when Hardcastle said, right out of the blue, "Promise me you'll give your dad a few more chances."

"What? What're you talking about?"

"I want you to promise me –"

"No, I _heard_ what you said. I just don't know why you said it. You think Sonny's gonna blow me off again?"

"Maybe."

"But, Judge, it's better now, it's not like it was in Atlantic City."

"Yeah." There was a load of regret in Hardcastle's voice. "But I got news for you, sport. Sooner or later, he's gonna fall off that log and take a header into the river again – damn, must be a family thing – anyway, it's gonna happen, it's just the way he's made. I just want you to be willing to give him another chance or two, or three or four – or however many chances it takes."

McCormick's voice turned a little sharp. "And why should I do that?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Well," Hardcastle shifted slightly and stared up at the ceiling. "Because I think deep down, that man cares about you. If he hadn't cared about you before, he would have let you go ahead and walk out that night in his dressing room, back in Atlantic City. If he didn't care about you now, he woulda just taken that bar and sold it for what it was worth without ever even crossing the L.A. city limits, and you never woulda heard one word from him. He didn't have to come to Gulls' Way, and he didn't have to stay once he saw the welcome he was gonna get. He cared enough about you that he was willing to stick to his guns, even when the bent noses threatened to beat him up and then made good on it. And let me tell you something, kiddo, he didn't sit there and be the bait for the bad guys because of anything me or Frank said, or because he believed it was the right thing to do. He did it because _you_ thought it was the right thing to do, and he cared that much what you thought about him."

It was McCormick's turn to be taken aback. Undoubtedly this was something Hardcastle had wanted to get off his chest for a long, long time, and so, because he respected Milton Hardcastle even if he had his doubts about Sonny Daye, he pondered the judge's words for a few minutes. Then he said decisively, "So you _don't_ think he's gonna change."

"I didn't say _that_. He's already changed some, and he _might _change some more, but you know, kid, it's hard for a leopard to change its spots after fifty-something years; he may never get to where you think he ought to be. I think it says something that he _has_ changed to some extent – the Sonny Daye of Atlantic City would _never_ have done what he did last year. And I think the reason he's changed is because now he has a reason to change."

There was a faint cynicism in McCormick's voice. "Sonny, change because of me? The kid he left behind without a backward glance almost thirty years ago?"

"Yeah," Hardcastle answered slowly, then said nothing for a long time, so long that McCormick finally said, in an entirely different tone, "Judge? You okay?"

"Yeah," Hardcastle said again, then he continued in a low, almost diffident voice, "Let me tell you something, McCormick. There are a lot of ways to abandon a kid besides walking out the door and never coming back. There's the dad who won't take care of himself, all beer and pizza, and then goes out with a heart attack at forty-one. There's the dad who has kids but keeps on with a lifestyle that's a little on the criminal side, and the day his oldest graduates from high school, he's out hoeing the Big House garden."

Hardcastle fell silent, then continued in a cold voice, "And then there's the dad who never leaves, who looks from the outside like a responsible parent, has a job, keeps food on the table, clothes on the family's backs, sometimes he even shells out for a luxury or two – but he's such a bastard, by the time the kid is grown, he wishes his old man _had _taken a hike."

Hardcastle spoke with such bitterness that McCormick turned his head to look at him, even though there was little to see in the darkness, asking with bewilderment in his voice, "I thought your dad raised beans."

There was a growl of frustration from Hardcastle. "I'm not talking about _my_ father, McCormick! I'm talking about _me!_"

"_What?_"

Hardcastle continued reflectively, "Funny how you can look at the same thing from opposite sides and see things so differently. For a long time, you wanted to hate your dad because he walked out on you, and sometimes I think the best thing I coulda ever done for my kid was walk out on him."

"Judge, where is this coming from? You weren't a bastard as a father."

Hardcastle replied harshly, "Well, I wasn't gonna be nominated for Father of the Year either. Why do you think my kid ran off and joined the army?"

"Well," McCormick said in a baffled voice, "maybe they made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Chances to see exotic places, stuff like that."

"McCormick, back in '71, an eighteen-year-old kid didn't join the Army just to see the world. By then, most everyone, even the teenagers, knew what part of the world anyone who joined up was likely to see, and it wasn't a place with balmy beaches or geisha girls."

"But, Judge, there's no _way _..."

"McCormick, for _God's sake _..." Hardcastle stopped suddenly, gasping in pain, and McCormick was already halfway out from under his blanket by the time the judge, somehow divining his reaction, reached across and grabbed his arm. "It's okay, kid," Hardcastle said weakly. "I swear it is. I just got a little carried away there."

"Okay, that's it, no more talking. We'll both go to sleep like good little boys," McCormick stated firmly, although a slight tremor to his voice betrayed just how frightened he actually was.

"The _hell_ we're gonna stop talking," Hardcastle replied belligerently. "You started it, we're damn well gonna finish it."

"This wasn't quite what I had in mind. Just calm down, all right?" McCormick reluctantly laid his head back onto his pillow. "We'll talk – but quietly, okay?"

"Okay," Hardcastle grumbled, releasing McCormick's arm and settling down once again. More softly, he continued, "What I was gonna say was, you of all people should know what I'm talking about – you've been on the wrong side of my temper often enough."

"Aw, Judge, that's just you. I've kinda learned to ignore it, you know."

"No joke. Anyway, the thing is, if you have a time dealing with it and you're thirty-odd years old, how bad do you think it would be for a teen-age boy? I'm telling you, McCormick, I wasn't what you'd call a shining example as a father. I was pretty hard on my kid, and my expectations were probably a little on the high side."

"Judge, I think you're being awfully hard on _yourself_. No matter how hard you were on your son, or how high your expectations, I don't have any doubt you loved him and he loved you."

"Loving him didn't protect him from a Viet Cong bullet, now, did it?"

There was a stifling silence, then McCormick said gently, "Judge ... why're you bringing all this stuff up now? What does it have to do with me and Sonny?"

"Well, I was just thinking. It might be that Sonny Daye and I are two of a kind ..."

McCormick's reaction was immediate and indignant. "Now, wait a minute here, Sonny's my dad, and maybe – just _maybe_ – I'm beginning to see him in a different light. But, Judge, you and Sonny aren't even in the same _league_, let alone the same ballpark. Hell, you're not even playing the same _game_!"

"Would you just _shut up_ and let me finish here?" There was genuine anger in Hardcastle's retort, and McCormick promptly shut up, although he had to bite his tongue to do it. Hardcastle cleared his throat and continued, "As I was sayin', it might be that your dad and I are a lot alike – screwed up big time, lost our sons, and there's nothing we can do to give 'em back what _they_ lost in the process."

"Judge ..."

"What I'm trying to _say_ is that I had a son and I lost him, see? And I kinda think maybe _I'm_ the reason I lost him. But there's nothing I can do about it now. I can't fix it, and it's too late for him to forgive me or give me a second chance. But your dad, he made an _effort_, kid. Maybe it wasn't much by your standards, but it's like he told me, he never had anything worth passing along to anyone until he won that club in that poker game. And you know, it might be that as time goes on, he'll take that next step forward, and another one, and another one. But it might be that he'll miss that next step and land flat on his face, or try to take one step forward and slip two back. Or it might be that he'll never go either way, just stay the same Sonny he is right now."

Hardcastle paused, then said in a near-pleading voice, "Kid, I know Sonny's no Ward Cleaver, but he's still worth _something_. Compared to some of the guys who came through my courtroom, he's practically gemstone material, and anyway, he's worth something to me, just because he's your dad. What I'm trying to tell you is that my son _can't_ give me a second chance, and I don't want that to happen to you and Sonny, okay? Life's just too short to let that kind of bitterness and regret poison the rest of your lives. I think my son forgave me, I hope so, but I don't know for sure. But your dad, well, it's not too late for him to know _his_ kid forgave _him_, even if he didn't deserve it."

McCormick said with a groan, "Judge, I don't know about this ..."

"As a matter of fact," the judge continued, as though McCormick hadn't uttered a sound, "there's this book I thumb through once in a while that says a little something on the subject. It calls that kind of forgiveness 'grace' or some such name as that. Apparently the guy who wrote it thought that if He can do it, we oughta be able to do it, too." There was a meaningful pause. "And it seems to me that chain you're always wearin' around your neck says you might have checked out that book a time or two yourself."

McCormick could feel Hardcastle's eyes boring in his direction, as if he could even see the expression on his face. He sighed in resignation. "So you think I oughta keep on forgiving Sonny, even if he keeps on screwing up?"

"Well, kid, I think it goes with the territory, if you know what I mean. Who knows, you might even have to do that for me someday." There was a disturbing texture to Hardcastle's voice that made McCormick a little uneasy. "And if you ever need to talk to someone about it, someone who knows a little something about forgiving people who've hurt you or not been there for you, well, I got an idea about that, too. Next time you go to Mass, you might have a little chat with that guy hanging on that cross over the altar table; it might be that He has some idea where you're coming from. After all, there was one time when it looked like even _His _dad was lettin' Him down."

A quietness settled over the cold interior of the car, broken only by the swift lapping of the water outside and the heaviness of Hardcastle's breathing. Then McCormick asked softly, "Judge, why haven't you ever said any of this before?"

"Because it was none of my business."

"It's still none of your business. So why are you saying it now?"

"Because I think it needs to be said, and I might not be around to say it later."

"Kinda like getting the place in order, before you vacate the premises?" asked McCormick sardonically. "You're not planning on doing any vacating any time in the near future, are you, Hardcase?"

"Well, kid," answered Hardcastle noncommittally. "You never know."

"Judge?"

"Hmmm?" Hardcastle's voice sounded as though he hardly had the strength to answer.

"What do you think it is?" There was a vast unhappiness underpinning McCormick's voice.

"What do I think _what_ is?"

"Whatever this ... disease is you've got."

Reluctantly Hardcastle answered, "I dunno. Gallstones, maybe. I've never had any before, but Nancy had 'em once. I don't remember her ever being as sick as I've been, though. Hurting, yeah, she hurt a lot, but not like this. On the other hand, I've heard of people who almost died with a gallbladder attack. I reckon it just all depends on how big those gallstones are." He paused. "I'm not really up on my digestive tract, where everything is located, you know. It could be something going on with my colon or small intestines, an infection or something; that would explain the fever. I gave up my appendix a long time ago, and I don't have any jaundice, or at least I didn't earlier." There was a longer pause. "Still, it _might_ be liver or pancreas. I've seen that before too."

"It's beginning to hurt really bad all the time now, isn't it?"

"It sorta comes and goes. Makes me feel like those folks in Parkfield must feel – just sittin' around, wondering when the Big One's gonna hit."

The roof wobbled as McCormick changed position, then his voice came, muffled, as though his face were buried in his pillow. "Okay, I'll promise."

"Promise what?"

"To cut Sonny some slack. That's all I can promise, Judge. I can't promise I won't ever get mad, or want to haul off and sock him. But I won't walk away unless I'm sure the situation is past praying for – and I mean that in more ways than one. Will that satisfy you?"

"Yeah," Hardcastle answered, and the smile was back in his voice. He continued thoughtfully, "You know, I wonder. Six years or so is a long time for a one-night stand, especially when there's no marriage license involved, and it's a little strange, some of the stuff you remember about him, pretty specific for a five-year-old who didn't lay eyes on the guy for another twenty-five years – what kind of car he drove, the tattoo on his arm, even him going to the beach with you and your mom. That sounds like he was around a lot back then, which to me _doesn't_ sound much like a man who'd just walk away and desert his family, even if he and your mom weren't married. I might be wrong, it might've happened just the way it looks like it did. But still, I wonder just what _did_ make him leave?"

"He _says_ he got on a plane to a gig, and just kept on going."

"I seriously doubt he learned to be a master safecracker _after_ he left you and your mom. Might be he was a little like you in the juvenile know-how department, and it caught up to him. I just _wonder _..."

"Well, you just keep wondering, and if – when – I see him again, I'll ask him about it. And this time, I'll sit him down and _really_ ask him. Who knows, maybe I'll even get a straight answer."

"Sure ... and when you do, find out if he was in the military. I'm kinda curious now."

0000000000

"Judge?" McCormick asked sleepily.

"Yeah, McCormick?"

"I'm really sorry about the Edsel."

"McCormick, it's _okay_. You wanted something that you thought I'd be comfortable in. And I was, for a while anyway. As a matter of fact, if we hadn't been in the Edsel when that bridge collapsed, I expect we'd both be dead right now."

"You think?"

"Yeah, I think."

"She really is something, isn't she, Judge?"

"She sure is, McCormick."

"I wish I'd been around in her day."

"You were, kiddo. You were about four years old when this model came out."

"Yeah, a lot of good that did me." There was a short pause, then McCormick said, apropos of nothing, "What _is_ it with Studebakers, that everyone seemed to drive one back then?"

"Well, all _I _ever drove were GMC's."

McCormick gave a drowsy snort. "Yeah. All two of 'em."

"Make that all three of 'em. I bought the first one back in '45, right out of the service. Now _that_ was one heck of a truck." As Hardcastle spoke, his voice grew gradually fainter, his final words ending with a soft snuffling and the beginnings of a snore.

"Well, anyway, I really do wish me and this girl had met up earlier." McCormick finally began to nod off himself as he mumbled, "Boy, if only I were twenty years older ..."

And as McCormick faded to sleep, with Hardcastle's snores rumbling in the background, it seemed to him that the Edsel herself was whispering softly in his ear, in a sultry, sensuously feminine voice, _"Now _you're cookin', kiddo."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

As a dull gray light began to invade the interior of the Edsel, Hardcastle lay on his back, staring up toward the now-visible carpeted floorboard, listening to the sounds of the river as the water level continued to slowly rise outside the overturned car. He felt a suspicious pitching movement beneath him, similar to a boat at anchor, and he thought their perch on the rocks was now becoming tenuous at best. It was apparent that their situation would soon be changing for the worse, and he knew he should wake McCormick and let him know how things stood; for that matter, he should already have woken him, just on general principle. Concussions were tricky things, and skull fractures even trickier, and with that knock on the head, there was no way McCormick had managed to escape one or the other, as evidenced by that rather odd little episode during the small hours of the morning.

McCormick had been adamant – pigheaded was a better word – about trying to make conversation with Hardcastle until he could no longer keep his eyes open. But as the kid had had hardly any rest and was in such pain when he was awake, Hardcastle didn't have the heart to rouse him now that he was finally sleeping. Better that McCormick should reserve his strength for whatever came next, than expend it on worrying about things over which he had no control. Hardcastle felt sure that they would not have much longer to wait, although he personally would welcome whatever release presented itself, even if it should be beneath the churning water that was finally making its determined way into their heretofore safe little haven.

In fact, for the last hour or so, Hardcastle had been having a rather meaningful conversation with the Man Upstairs about that very thing – trying to get his spiritual affairs settled once and for all – and he thought things were about as squared away as they would ever be. There was something soothing about the idea that soon he and his wife and his son would be together again; he had always had a few reservations about where he himself would land when all was said and done, but he had never had any doubts about the ultimate destination of the rest of his family. Now he felt fairly confident they would all eventually turn up at more or less the same place – although he did suspect he was in for a good talking to on a couple of subjects first.

But McCormick – well, McCormick had too much living yet to do to give up so easily. Hardcastle and the Big Guy had talked a little about McCormick too, about how he would still need someone to look after him after Hardcastle was gone. Sonny Daye wasn't the only doubtful relationship in McCormick's life; a parade of past and present McCormick girlfriends almost as long as the estate driveway rose up in Hardcastle's mind, and those were just the ones the kid had dated since he had come to Gulls' Way more than three years ago. Hardcastle didn't think it was too much to ask that the kid finally get some stability to his life, with a nice girl to care for him, a couple of kids to worship him, and a law career that just might evolve into a judgeship, if he turned out to be as good a lawyer as Hardcastle suspected he would. Hardcastle even had an idea about the girl he hoped McCormick would eventually marry, but that would be up to McCormick in the end, regardless of whether or not Hardcastle was still in the picture.

Whatever happened, though, Hardcastle was not prepared to let McCormick sacrifice himself in an effort to save his friend, and so he had made his plans accordingly. He thought back to their earlier discussion, and what he had said about forgiveness, and he wondered if McCormick would ever be able to forgive him for what he intended to do. But there was no choice; he was much too ill to make any real effort at escape, and any attempt on McCormick's part to assist him would probably only double the tragedy. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps they would be able to get away from here with no problems at all, but he could feel the car beginning to toss ever more violently in the rising water, and that alone provided grounds for some rather serious doubts on his part.

Hardcastle stirred restlessly, the cold and damp settling deep into his bones, and he immediately paid the price for that small movement, swallowing deep into his throat an involuntary cry of pain. He desperately wished he could turn over and make sure the kid was really okay, but the abuse his own body had experienced had brought the pain in his abdomen to a constant, flaming torment, as though his insides had ripped apart and were even now crammed, raw and bleeding, just inside his skin. If he stayed very, very still, he could still control the pain to an extent, but it had steadily worsened during the night, so that every movement had become almost unbearable. Somehow he had found the strength to keep his true condition from McCormick's pain-dulled scrutiny, and he could only be thankful that he had managed to keep the kid's suspicions at bay as long as he had. Now that it was daylight, however, it was only a matter of time before he caught on.

To his impotent fury, Hardcastle realized that he was shivering helplessly, caught in the throes of an intermittent ague that had set in with the coming of daybreak. Between the shivering, the pain in his side, the pain in his gut, and the ache in his shoulders, he was miserable indeed, but his fear of waking McCormick made him set his teeth against an almost irrepressible groan. He thought he'd been fairly successful in keeping himself quiet, but when he turned his head toward the kid, he found his eyes meeting McCormick's, strangely calm and watchful. McCormick's voice was equally calm as he asked, "When did it start getting light?"

Hardcastle couldn't trust his voice not to shake in time with his shivering, so he whispered, "About thirty minutes ago." He grinned weakly. "Nice to see you again."

"Yeah, same here. You've looked better, but probably so have I." He stretched his arm across and laid his hand across the judge's forehead, frowning as he noticed the trembling; Hardcastle thought he could see an increasing worry in his face. "Judge, when did this start?"

There was no reason to lie; that point had been passed at daybreak. "About an hour ago," Hardcastle answered through blue lips, his voice shaking despite his best efforts. "God, kiddo, it's so _cold_."

Concerned, McCormick reached to adjust the overcoat, starting with surprise as his hand came into contact with sodden material. "What the ..."

Sitting up hastily, just by luck missing the edge of the seatback that hung suspended overhead, McCormick bent over Hardcastle and flung aside the coat, paying no heed to Hardcastle's feeble protests. The judge fell silent as McCormick gripped a handful of his shirt, only to find it as saturated as the discarded overcoat, the skin it supposedly protected as chilled as a block of ice. He glanced down to see his own pants soaked halfway up his thighs, shocked at the realization that at some point since he'd fallen asleep, the roof had become awash in river water, its encroachment temporarily arrested by the absorbency of Hardcastle's clothing.

"Oh, my God, Judge, why didn't you _tell_ me?" His grip on the judge's shirt tightened convulsively as he looked up in alarm, noticing for the first time the change in the feel of the car. His eyes, now clearly visible in the strengthening light, met Hardcastle's with a look of despair. "What are we gonna do now?"

And to that, Hardcastle had no reply at all.

0000000000

The dreadful thing was, there was nothing McCormick _could_ do now. He released Hardcastle's shirt and collapsed back limply, hugging his knees to his chest and leaning his aching head against the seatback beside him, as he realized just how truly dire their predicament had become. Two men trapped in a wrecked car on a freezing cold February dawn in the middle of some unknown river, with one man desperately ill and dependent on the other man, who was himself suffering from a concussion, if not a full-fledged skull fracture – as a recipe for catastrophe, it could hardly have been more perfectly designed. He was unpleasantly reminded of those first few moments after Weed Randall had died in his arms from a bullet he himself had fired from Hardcastle's gun; even the words running through his mind had an eerie echo of the past. _Oh, God_, he thought helplessly, _what happens now?_

Then McCormick gathered himself in, shook himself in anger, and sat up with a determined, if dizzying, jerk. This was ridiculous; he wasn't dead yet, and neither was Hardcastle, and he wasn't going to give up until and unless they were. He knelt again at the judge's side and reached out for one of his icy hands, chafing it gently between both his own. Earlier, with the car interior dry and secure, and with both of them armed with warm coverings, they had been comfortable enough, but now, with Hardcastle already completely soaked to the skin and him almost there as well, the twin specters of hypothermia and pneumonia were beginning to rear their dangerously furtive heads. McCormick thought cynically that it was only one of the ironies of their situation that Hardcastle should feel so cold when his body temperature, if measured by the thermometer, would probably register well over the hundred degree mark by now.

"Judge," he began, as he laid down one well-chafed hand and reached for the other one, "I hate to tell you this, but I think we're about at the make-it-or-break-it part of the plan."

"You mean you _have_ a plan?" asked Hardcastle absently as he watched McCormick's industrious hand-rubbing. "McCormick, what do you think you're doing? It's not like they're gonna _stay_ warm, you know."

"It makes _me_ feel a little better," McCormick answered defiantly, rubbing Hardcastle's hand all the harder for being called on it. "Judge, I can't take the pain away, and I can't take the water away, and I can't take the fever away. But by gum, I can get your hands warm, and mine too in the process." He flicked a strained grin in Hardcastle's direction. "And let me tell you something, we're gonna need _my_ hands nice and warm if we're gonna find a way to get out of here."

"And just how are you planning to do that?" replied Hardcastle with a strangely disinterested curiosity, his gaze still fastened on his own hand trapped between McCormick's constantly moving ones.

McCormick sighed. "I was afraid you might ask me that, and I don't think you're going to like the answer much. The only thing I see to do is go out through the windshield and hope we can hang on to those rocks outside. And if we're gonna have to do that, I'd better be checking out the escape route."

And with those words, McCormick laid the judge's hand by his side and began cautiously crawling over toward the front of the car, wondering a little at the regretful sadness he had seen in those tired blue eyes.

0000000000

As Hardcastle waited for McCormick's return, he noticed for the first time how surprisingly well the interior of the car had survived the crash. Everything seemed mostly intact, with the exception of the two sections of McCormick's seat belt; both still swung randomly from their anchors on the front seat, although one was significantly shorter than the other, its latch, along with a portion of its length, still attached securely to its counterpart. Suddenly Hardcastle wondered what he had done with his pocketknife after he'd cut the belt; digging very cautiously in his trousers pocket, he was surprised to find it there. He would have to remember to give it to McCormick later; he just might find a need for it before this was all over.

An exclamation from McCormick drew his attention back to the front of the car, where the kid was on one knee, balancing carefully in the water, right on the edge of the windshield. He turned around and called to Hardcastle, "Judge, we're definitely floating here. If we're gonna go, it's gotta be now." He cast one more anxious glance through the windshield, then began crawling quickly back toward Hardcastle, only to stop in confusion when he realized that the judge was making no effort at all to move. "Judge," he said doubtfully, "what's going on?"

"Well, kiddo, I've been thinking, and I've decided that I'm not going with you," Hardcastle announced in a deceptively agreeable tone. "Without me, you have a really good chance to make it out of here in one piece, but you've got no chance at all with me. So I'm staying here, and you're going without me." And while his smile was almost as agreeable as his voice, the determination in his eyes practically dared McCormick to contradict his decision.

McCormick stared back at him with a distressing lack of comprehension. "What do you mean, you're not going? Look, Hardcase, either we both go, or neither of us goes. And since neither of us is staying, I guess we're both going, and we'd better be going pretty quick, too, 'cause things are starting to get a little dicey around here."

"McCormick," Hardcastle said, and there was something in his voice that caught McCormick's attention, a darkly fatalistic quality that brought him crawling the rest of the way to the judge's side. Hardcastle lay back against the folded jacket, studying the kid's face carefully, his own countenance shadowed by pain and an strange sense of foreboding. "You know, we could go through all this, trying to get me up so I can go out there, and who knows what we'd be doing, climbing rocks or swimming around in a lot of muddy water. It might even be that you'd get hurt worse, or even die trying to save me, and there's no good reason for it, 'cause all we woulda gained is me a little extra time. It's not going to change anything in the long run."

"A little extra time? Judge, what are you talking about?" McCormick sat right back into the water, his brow crinkled in puzzlement, as though he were trying to decipher Hardcastle's words and making no headway at all. Then his face darkened as his eyes narrowed in sudden understanding. "Hardcastle, are you trying to tell me that you think you're _dying_? Is _that_ what all this malarkey's about?" There was disbelief in his words, along with the first suggestion of an ominous flatness to his voice.

"Kiddo," Hardcastle said gently, "I've seen people before who've been sick like I'm sick. Just like me, they got to hurting really bad, and then they went to the hospital and had the tests, and three weeks later they were gone."

"Oh, you're a doctor now?" asked McCormick sarcastically. "Because if you're not, then I got news for you, Hardcase, it's a _doctor's_ job to tell you that you've got three weeks to live, not yours. What _is_ this, Judge? You get sick once in twenty years, and it has to be something you don't recover from? Didn't you listen to yourself a while ago? You listed a whole medical dictionary of stuff it could be, and most of 'em aren't fatal, they just make you, well, really sick."

"As sick as this? McCormick, it's been getting worse and worse, and now it's gotten to the point where it hurts so bad, I don't care when I die, as long as it's soon. But I do care where I die, and how. And who I take with me." Hardcastle turned his head away, and with a hopelessness that was completely foreign to the Milton C. Hardcastle that McCormick knew so well, he muttered, "McCormick, I don't wanna die with a bunch of tubes running into my body all over the place, and some hose hanging out from one side of my mouth, and some stupid machine going beep, beep, beep, driving everyone crazy, and me just lying there, waiting for the beeps to get slower and slower and slower, and then finally they stop and I'm dead. I don't _think_ it's gonna happen, McCormick, I _know_ it is, and I'd rather go right here, right now, with my mind clear and my boots on, than to wind up like that." He rolled his head back to stare at the floorboard overhead, continuing with a sigh, "And God knows the last thing I want is for you to go before _your_ time, just because of _my_ stupidity."

Then Hardcastle closed his eyes, not so much from exhaustion, but because he could not bear to see the intense blue stare that willed him to say something, do _something_, to show that his spirit had not been completely broken, that he would continue to fight this thing through to the bitter end. But the images of his wife and his son came into his mind, and the pain continued to build in his gut, and he was so incredibly _tired_. He just didn't have the will to fight anymore – not even for McCormick's sake.

Still, even though he had half expected it, Hardcastle wasn't quite prepared for the hardness in McCormick's voice as he said evenly, "Are you finished?"

Hardcastle turned to look at him, at his face set like granite and the coldness in his eyes, and wondered uneasily what he was thinking. "Yeah, I'm finished."

"Good. Because if you ask me, stupid doesn't even _begin_ to cover it, and I'm not just talking about the way we managed to get stuck here in this river. If you want to quit and give it all up, that's up to you. But you're _not_ gonna do it on my time."

Then, grimly foregoing the pleading-and-arguing preliminaries, McCormick cut straight to the chase. With no hesitation and no apparent compunction, he grabbed Hardcastle under the arms and unceremoniously hauled him across the waterlogged roof, to the accompaniment of a few strangled ejaculations and a surprised, anguished yelp of pain from his reluctant burden. Upon their precipitate arrival next to the broken windshield, McCormick shoved him into a sitting position against the passenger side door. He then crouched across from Hardcastle next to the steering wheel, the harshness of their combined breathing the only sounds to be heard above the rushing of the river over their no-longer-secure anchorage.

For his part, Hardcastle was hurting, and embarrassed, and furious despite his embarrassment, and he had every intention of venting that fury in no uncertain terms. But at the sight of the assumed indifference on McCormick's face, the unreadable expression in his eyes as he stared out through the broken windshield, Hardcastle swallowed his words with a difficulty stemming from the sudden dryness of his mouth, rather than his suddenly dissipated anger. He now realized, in appalled belatedness, the reasoning that lay behind McCormick's unexpectedly hostile response, a reasoning so predictable, yet so completely opposite to Hardcastle's original intentions, that he could have shot himself for being so blind. As McCormick said, stupid didn't even begin to cover it, and there was nothing Hardcastle could say now to alter the kid's obvious misconception and its inevitable fallout.

For a few un-Hardcastle-like moments, he wished he had never heard of San Francisco, or George Mangell, or Mark McCormick, or Malibu – or, for good measure, southern California, with all the painful conflicts and entanglements and misunderstandings and mistakes he had encountered and engendered during his nearly forty-five years of living there. But he abruptly shut down that line of thinking; those were a coward's thoughts, and he had never been a coward, no matter what McCormick might think of him now. He had brought this on himself; the least he could do was face the consequences with dignity, even though it was a dignity that was quickly unraveling at the edges.

Hardcastle blinked, realizing that McCormick was no longer looking out the windshield, but was now staring directly at him. There was no doubt now about the anger in those blue eyes, an icy rage that caused an equivalent coldness within the judge's heart, and he had the strangest sensation that, despite his fever, his entire body was in fact cooling from the inside out, like he was dead already, even though he could still see, and hear, and even feel. Perhaps that was due to this curious sense of loss, this idea that _everything_ was over and done with, regardless of whether he actually lived or died.

Deep down, he could already feel the beginnings of grief over a friendship he had deliberately severed to no good purpose, although it had not seemed that way when he had made his plans during those endless predawn hours. But there was nothing he could do about it now, and so he sat propped limply against the upended door, desolate and depleted and sick at heart, although his impassive face showed none of those things. As he wondered just how his calculations could have gone so terribly awry, he tried with an effort to concentrate on McCormick's words.

For McCormick was speaking now, in a hard, steady voice that nevertheless seemed to hum with tension. "I don't know where you got the idea that your mind is clear, Hardcastle, because it's pretty obvious to me that somewhere along the line, it's gotten a little on the foggy side. But what's clear in _my_ mind is that you are _not_ going to do this to me. We are leaving here together, and you'll just have to lay your boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck impression on some other flunky some other time. If you can't walk, I'll carry you, and don't you think I can't. As for what happens after we get out of this mess, we'll just have to wait and see. But get this, Hardcastle, you are not dying until it's actually your time to die, do you hear me? If shuffling off this mortal coil is really something you're looking forward to, well, I can't stop you from _wanting_ to die, but I can sure as hell keep you from _expediting_ the process, at least as far as your staying here and drowning in this car."

McCormick leaned forward, his eyes practically drilling holes into Hardcastle's. "You wanted a promise from me earlier, now you're gonna return the favor. You are going to promise me that you won't give up, that you won't just go out there and lay down and die once we're out of here. You _owe_ me that, Hardcastle, for the hell I've been through since I got back from Daytona, and I am _not_ taking no for an answer. Got that?"

Hardcastle nodded.

"You promise?"

Hardcastle nodded again.

"_Say_ it!"

"I promise."

"Do you mean it?"

"Dammit, I _said_ it, didn't I?" Hardcastle burst out resentfully. "I said it, I meant it."

McCormick sat back on his heels, with his hands tightly clasped in his lap, his gaze bitter on Hardcastle's face. "I shoulda known you'd try to pull a stunt like this. But if you think I could leave you behind here in this car to die, like some kind of hero falling on his sword, well, you got another think coming."

All of a sudden, the car jerked sideways beneath them, so that McCormick had to grab the dash to keep from pitching forward into the water. There was a horrible scraping noise, and then the car began to pitch and roll, nearly free of its rock-pile moorings. The water was coming in much faster now, so that he had to hang on to the steering wheel over his shoulder before he could bend down to look through the windshield. What could be seen there was alarming to say the least; the rocks that only seconds before had held the Edsel securely in place were now beginning to move away at a frightening speed. McCormick closed his eyes for a second, then he turned grimly back to Hardcastle. "Well, Hardcastle, you might get your way after all. We're gonna have to swim for it."

0000000000

Even as the water poured in through the broken windshield, causing the car to cant slightly to one side, McCormick was back on his knees by Hardcastle, ruthlessly stripping off his shirt and impatiently slapping away his ineffectual attempts to help; then, leaving the judge shivering in his t-shirt, he reached down beneath the water and hastily pulled off both his and Hardcastle's shoes. Straightening, he pulled his own jacket and shirt over his head in one fluid movement, absently noting the loss of a button from his shirt cuff as he debated whether or not his own undershirt should go.

As McCormick's t-shirt rolled up from his waist, he was shocked to see a vivid blue-green bruising across his lower chest, disappearing past his waistband toward his upper abdomen, and for the first time, he noticed a dull ache in that area. Suddenly he remembered Hardcastle's vague description of his rescue from the confines of the seatbelt, how he had been hanging there like 'a side of beef', and he cast a speculative glance at the driver's side seat belt and its raggedly hacked edges, followed by an even more appraising glance toward Hardcastle, who was abstractedly staring across the car and out the driver's side window.

But everything, the t-shirt question, the missing button, the bruises, all were forgotten with the realization that the car was sinking ever more quickly into what was revealed to be a very considerable river, much wider and deeper than it had appeared from the now-nonexistent bridge. He cast a frantic glance around the car interior, looking for something floatable that they could hang onto until they could get to the riverbank, but nothing presented itself as a likely prospect. He spotted the radar detector tossed against the driver's side of the upturned interior, its cord lying tangled by its side, and automatically he reached up to touch his forehead, surprised to discover that he had completely forgotten about his headache.

Suddenly he had an idea. Picking up the radar detector, he stared at it vindictively before yanking off its long cord with one vicious jerk. Then he brought the cord to Hardcastle, tying one end securely to the judge's belt and stuffing the other end deep into the judge's nearest pants pocket, remarking as he did so, "You can give that end back to me once we're outside the car."

Hardcastle watched his proceedings in bewilderment. "Just what are you planning to do, McCormick? Tow me?"

"No," McCormick replied shortly, "I just want to try to make sure I don't lose you once we get out there." Taking his jacket and wrapping it around one hand, he started beating at the broken glass that still rimmed that area of the windshield; when he was satisfied that it was as safe as he could make it, he turned to Hardcastle, his calmness masking the tightness in his throat, and announced, "Time to go. Just make sure you head straight to the left once you clear the windshield, okay? And look, grab onto whatever part of the car you can get hold of and use that to get up to the surface, and then hang on tight until I catch up and get hold of that cord, 'cause I don't know what's gonna happen once we get out in that current. Go on, I'll be right behind you."

Hardcastle nodded silently and leaned down toward the windshield, moving with an excruciating slowness. McCormick watched him, truly seeing him for the first time since they had left San Francisco – the deeply embedded lines of pain creasing the sallow skin of his face; the dark bruises that were dotted here and there across the visible parts of his body; his sternly set jaw; the blank, almost vacant expression in his eyes; the hesitant, agonizingly sluggish movements – and it came to McCormick that this man really _was_ sickening unto death, that his ability to move now was only due to his grim determination to stick to his promise and not let McCormick down again. He looked so old and frail, so terribly vulnerable ... and before he even realized what he was doing, McCormick had stopped him, holding him by the wrist with a grip so tight that the bones grated against one another in protest against the unexpected constriction.

Hardcastle turned to look back at him, brows knit, as he answered impatiently, "_What_?"

McCormick closed his eyes for a second, forcing himself to ignore the knot of fear that had suddenly lodged in the middle of his chest. But he could not keep the anxiety out of his voice as he stammered, "I don't ... I can't ... look, Judge, for God's sake, be _careful_, alright? Wait for me, and please don't do anything stupid. _Please_?" There was a world of meaning hidden in those halting words, much more than could be expressed in the few remaining seconds allotted to them, and McCormick could not seem to release the fingers that remained locked around Hardcastle's wrist.

Hardcastle studied McCormick for a brief moment, before replying with a faint return of his normal cockiness, "Hey, I made you a promise, didn't I?" He pulled his wrist free of McCormick's grasp and gave his arm a gentle pat. "We'll talk about it later, okay? C'mon, kiddo, we gotta go. See ya on the riverbank." The next second, he was through the windshield, and into the murky water beyond.

Left alone with the car, McCormick took a quick glance around the Edsel, at her beautiful upholstery, her silk lining that was now all but obscured by the rising water, the polished chrome buttons on her steering wheel that said this car was one like no other. Then he rubbed the leather-trimmed dashboard affectionately, startled to feel a slight stinging in his eyes. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said in a voice soft with regret. "You deserve a lot better ending than this."

Then he too was gone, leaving the Edsel alone but not forlorn, facing whatever came next with all the chutzpah with which her life had begun. And as she finally broke free of the last rocks and careened wildly into the fast-moving current of the river, her unspoken farewell, directed to those who were the very last to ever bear her company, seemed to echo around the rocks and chasms that surrounded her soon-to-be final resting place.

_Godspeed._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

As cold as it had been inside the car's interior, that was nothing compared to the frigid water in which McCormick found himself struggling after he and Hardcastle had pushed off and away from the car and out into the river. He came up to the surface yet again, sputtering and gagging, his teeth chattering in the cold wind, just in time to see the Edsel sweep majestically past him, still upside down, caught in a much stronger current than the one in which he was swimming. The only parts of her visible now were the very lowest edges of her red-painted body, the rusty brown of her undercarriage, and the blackened rubber of her four tires as they reached futilely to the sky. It occurred to him that if he had left Hardcastle there, the judge would already be dead, his stiffening body floating face down in his waterlogged tomb, and McCormick looked around in panic, terrified that Hardcastle might still have been caught up with the Edsel in that powerful current. But the cord was still tightly wrapped around his hand, and the other end was definitely still attached to something both solid and weighty.

Suddenly, he felt a tug on the cord from somewhere to his right, and looking that way, he could see Hardcastle bobbing up and down, trying to catch his attention. McCormick made an effort to swim in that direction – it was only a matter of a few feet, after all – but he could make no headway against the current, so instead he tried pulling Hardcastle toward him. As Hardcastle was slightly upstream of him, this worked much better, although McCormick was worried that the cord might be too fragile to withstand the demands they were placing on it. Hardcastle, realizing what he was trying to do, paddled along in the cord's wake, and almost immediately he was at McCormick's side, his skin an icy whiteness, his eyes almost opaque with pain and fatigue. Still, he was alert, forcing himself to tread water despite his suffering.

"I thought you said that thing wasn't a towline!" Hardcastle yelled over the roar of the river.

"It wasn't supposed to be!" shouted McCormick in reply. He looked around despairingly and yelled, "Judge, we can't swim out of this, the current's just too strong. Got any ideas?"

Hardcastle grabbed hold of the back of McCormick's t-shirt with fumbling fingers and pulled himself closer, bringing his mouth directly next to McCormick's ear. "Look, just go with the flow, okay? See that bend down there, with the branch sticking up? Maybe we can catch hold of that."

McCormick looked over at the branch in question, positioned relatively near the riverbank, and nodded, already too exhausted to make any reply. Hardcastle kept his grip on McCormick's t-shirt, and together they rode the current, accompanied by small pieces of debris, sticks, clods of dirt, even an occasional splinter of wood that looked like it might have once been a part of the bridge that had betrayed them hours earlier. But there was nothing that they could use as a float to allow them a few desperately needed moments of breathing room, so they were forced to rely on each other for survival, an risky proposition indeed, considering just how near to exhaustion they both were at this point.

As they headed toward the bend in the river, a vagary of the current suddenly shot them straight in the direction of the branch itself, so that Hardcastle lost his grip on McCormick's shirt and they became separated, with the judge now slightly in front, although the cord between them still held. It was only when they were too close to do anything about it that McCormick realized the broken branch wasn't really a broken branch at all, but part of a fallen tree that lay submerged just beneath the surface, like an iceberg preying on unsuspecting ships. The unwary victim this time was Hardcastle, who slammed unawares against the hidden trunk with such force that he made hardly a sound, only an explosive exhaling of air and a soft whimper of pain, before slipping silently beneath the rushing waters.

McCormick, who had been a couple of feet directly behind the judge, realized just in the nick of time what had happened. Somehow he managed to bring his legs up, gliding over the submerged tree instead of into it. The next minute, he found himself painfully tangled in the branch that rose from the water's surface, with only a Divine Providence preventing him from having become impaled on it instead. Still, the branch had broken his headlong rush, and he was no longer trapped in the river's current. Frantically he climbed over to the place where Hardcastle had disappeared and positioned himself on the submerged trunk. Reached down beneath the surface of the water, he was surprised to find his hand immediately touching the back of Hardcastle's neck; evidently the current had prevented the judge from being dropped to the riverbed on impact, its force instead holding him draped against the trunk itself.

McCormick wasted no time, but quickly took hold of Hardcastle's arms, pulling him up with a superhuman effort out of the water and into a sitting position on the trunk beside him. His cold-numbed fingers tried anxiously to find a pulse in Hardcastle's neck with no result; he laid one hand against the judge's chest, but there was no motion that he could detect. McCormick became conscious of an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, as there was no way to do artificial respiration here in two feet of water, and they were still too far from the bank for it to be of any practical use.

In desperation, he pulled Hardcastle's body back against his; with a silent apology to the judge for what he was about to do, he braced his arms around him, one hand wrapped tightly around the other, and then brought both up sharply into Hardcastle's diaphragm. There was an immediate reaction from Hardcastle, a sudden gasp of pain, and then he took a quick sharp breath and began coughing helplessly, McCormick gently leaning him forward as brown and tainted water came streaming from his mouth into the equally muddy river below.

As Hardcastle's coughing slowly began to let up, McCormick felt like he had lived an eternity in those few minutes. His relief was short-lived, though, as the judge suddenly gave a deep groan and doubled over in such agony that he landed sideways against McCormick, almost knocking him over into the water. Hardcastle's eyes were squeezed shut, his arms wrapped tightly across his belly, and he could not speak, nor even acknowledge that he knew McCormick was there, still holding him securely with one arm tight across his back.

That was all McCormick could do for him, as spasm after spasm wracked the judge's body, accompanied by a series of animal-like gruntings and deep, anguished moanings – the first truly unrestrained sounds of pain he had heard from Hardcastle since this entire ordeal began. Then, gradually, the spasms eased, until the judge finally lay quiet against McCormick's side, his breathing slowly evening out as he trembled from the intense cold.

McCormick watched as Hardcastle's eyes sluggishly opened to half-slits, the awaking of a man who has beyond doubt reached the end of his rope and can pull himself no farther. Therefore, it was a comforting surprise to see the judge search out his face, the lackluster eyes meeting his with a tired smile. Hardcastle licked his lips, then said in a raspy voice that was little more than a whisper, "Hey there, kiddo."

"Hey," McCormick replied softly, unable to trust his voice to say any more. Reaction was setting in now, and his own trembling was as much due to shock as to the frigid temperature. His head, so mercifully free of pain for the last hour or so, had resumed its hypnotically rhythmic throbbing, and he could feel a rising nausea; he thought it likely that he would be sick himself, and very soon indeed.

Hardcastle was glancing around dispassionately, although McCormick had the distinct impression that he wasn't actually comprehending all that much. "I guess we made it, huh?"

McCormick looked behind them, at the expanse of water still separating them from the bank, and answered in a subdued voice, "I guess you could say that, but we still got a long way to go."

"So what now?" There was a slightly bracing note to Hardcastle's voice; obviously the dullness of McCormick's reply had not been lost on him.

McCormick tucked in his chin, hating the answer he had to give. "Well, we have to get clear of this tree, cross about five feet of water, and climb up a steep, rocky-looking bank." He studied the judge's white face. "You think you can handle that?"

"I said I wouldn't give up," Hardcastle answered, although his doubts were clearly written across his face. He tried to struggle away from McCormick, but the arm across his back tightened, forcing him to remain where he was.

"Hang on, I think we can spare a minute or two." McCormick gave the judge a reluctant grin. "Maybe you're in pretty good shape, Kemosabe, but I'm afraid ol' Tonto's gotta have a break."

"Okay," Hardcastle agreed with revealing promptness, relaxing again with a sigh. They were both silent for several minutes, watching the river rushing past them at an alarming speed. Then Hardcastle said suddenly, in the same raspy voice, "You know, McCormick, you might wanna learn to be a little more, ah, articulate when you talk to God. I expect He can handle sentences a little longer than two or three words just fine."

McCormick stared at him in perplexity. "Hardcase, what on earth are you talking about?"

"Well, kiddo," Hardcastle answered, and somehow a twinkle managed to peep out from his pain-dimmed eyes, "I think you got 'Oh, God', 'Please, God', and 'Dear God' down pat by now, and I gotta admit, this time you made a little breakthrough with 'Oh, please, dear God'. _Next_ time, though, maybe you can add a verse or two to go with the chorus."

McCormick's blush was easily seen against his wan complexion. Now that Hardcastle mentioned it, he did seem to recall a more-or-less constant stream of heaven-directed commentary, starting from the time Hardcastle had careened so violently into that sunken tree. Still, he honestly had no recollection of his actual words; trust Hardcastle to be listening at a time when anyone else would have been absorbed in a world of suffering all his own. McCormick laughed a little self-consciously. "Judge, I sincerely hope there won't be a next time, but I'll work on it, okay? I don't know why I need to fix what's not broken, though, seems to me I usually get the answer I'm asking for anyway."

They spent a few more peaceful moments at rest, during which McCormick noted a slight reddening above the horizon to the east, although the sky was still quite overcast. He watched the clouds as they began to take on a rose-tinted hue, then he looked down at Hardcastle and said regretfully, "It's time, Kemosabe."

Hardcastle lay still for a second more, then forced himself to sit up on his own steam, despite the icy cold water that came halfway up his chest. Glancing impatiently at McCormick and sounding almost like himself, he rasped, "C'mon, kiddo, we don't have all day."

McCormick clambered to his knees, one hand hanging on to the tree branch for balance, and without warning he felt his face turning green. Next thing he knew, he was crouched down at the far end of the trunk, toward the roots, and he was retching into the river, his own diaphragm contracting painfully as it sought to expel what few sad scraps remained of his last meal, the burger he had eaten back in Vallejo such an incredibly long time ago.

Then he huddled there in the shallower water, one hand braced unsteadily against a twisted root, as he forced saliva into his mouth and spit it out in an effort to wash the sour taste from his mouth. It came to him that neither he nor Hardcastle had drunk anything at all – unless you counted the river water the judge had taken in a few minutes ago – since their stop at Burger King the night before, and subconsciously he added dehydration to his ever-lengthening list of things that were a constant worry, but about which he could do nothing.

"McCormick? You okay, kid?" Hardcastle's voice was weak, but no less anxious for that, and McCormick knew that he must rise and keep going for both their sakes, no matter how much he wanted to lie down in that cold numbing water, suspended in some timeless place where the pain no longer existed and the hard decisions were no longer his to make.

"I'm okay," he finally replied to Hardcastle, wearily dragging himself to his feet. "Let's go." Then, catching Hardcastle's outstretched hand, he pulled him up as gently as he could, and together they crawled over the twig-laden branch to the water on the far side. As McCormick lowered the judge back down into the water, he was relieved to discover that the river was only about four or five feet deep at this point, and the current not nearly as strong, thanks to that submerged tree, although it was still a force to be reckoned with. He jumped in beside Hardcastle, and slowly they made their way toward where the riverbank rose only a foot or two above the water.

It appeared that at one time in the far distant past, this really had been a substantial river rather than a rain-swollen stream, and during that time it had cut for itself a very deep and forbidding riverbed. As a result, the water shoaled very little, with the river maintaining its depth right up to its steep banks. The two men struggled across its uncompromising mass, their feet losing purchase time and again on the loose sandy soil of the river bottom. By the time they came up against the riverbank, they were both almost helpless with exhaustion, Hardcastle leaning so heavily against McCormick that his head was barely above water.

McCormick's heart sank to his knees as he surveyed the next obstacle. The bank itself was solid rock, offering very few handholds or footholds, and as the river stood at about five feet at this point, he had no idea how he was to hoist the judge up to the top. To make matters worse, there was an attitude of tenseness about Hardcastle, a rigidity to his movements, which seemed to indicate the imminent onset of yet another serious wave of cramping.

Overcome with the conviction that time was finally running out for them, McCormick looked around, and leaving Hardcastle to lean against the embankment, he slogged his way through the water back to the downed tree. Pulling as hard as his weary arms would let him, he managed to break off a large portion of the branch that, while relatively thin, was nearly twice as long as he was tall. Then, dragging the broken branch after him, he came back and with difficulty propped it up against the bank.

"Here you go, Kemosabe. Instant ladder." McCormick looked at it dubiously. "Or it would be if we could get rid of some of those extra twigs and stuff."

"Wait a minute." Hardcastle groped in his pants pocket, and pulled out his pocketknife. "Here."

"Yeah, that'll help." McCormick started hacking away with the woefully tiny knife blade, and eventually he was able to display his creation with pride, saying, "Voila. _Almost_ instant ladder."

Hardcastle eyed the branch skeptically. "McCormick, do you really think that thing is gonna hold?"

"Judge, if all it does is hang in there long enough to get you halfway over that bank, I will be a happy man. And if it holds on long enough to get me up too, I'll be a _really_ happy man."

The look on Hardcastle's face wasn't exactly hopeful, but he nevertheless allowed McCormick to help him to his homemade ladder. But as he lifted his foot to the apex of the lowest limb, he suddenly fell back hard against McCormick, his face grimacing at the sudden acute pain, his fingers turning white as he clung to the branch. He could say nothing, the intensity of the pain making him mute, but his expression was eloquent for all that.

"C'mon, Judge, you can _do_ this," McCormick said insistently, stepping around to face Hardcastle, his own countenance a stark white mask. "Please, Judge. I'll push you up as far as I can, and by then you oughta be able to crawl out on the ground. _Please_, let's don't quit now, with a stupid seven-foot piece of rock stopping us." There was a determined desperation in his face, saying louder than words that if Hardcastle couldn't make the effort, then they'd both drown in five feet of water, because there was no way he was leaving without him.

Hardcastle closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the branch for a minute, trying to marshal his resources, then he straightened and nodded resignedly. Before McCormick could even move to help him, Hardcastle was on the branch and climbing, pausing to take a deep breath before every step, his face so tight with strain that his cheekbones stood out in clear relief, and the sweat that popped across his forehead trickled down his face like rain.

Hardcastle made it almost to the top before he stopped, one hand clinging to the branch while the other groped for a handhold on the brown grass that covered the top of the riverbank itself. McCormick made no sound, just maintained a steady grip on the judge's ankle to remind him that he was not alone, that if they did not succeed this time, they would try again. All of a sudden, as though even the thought of doing this again was not an option, Hardcastle made one last, gasping scramble for the top.

And then, finally, he was over, lying on his back against the grassy surface, his chest heaving as he fought to fill his empty lungs, desperate for air despite the pain that pierced both his ribs and his gut. McCormick could see nothing from his position down below, although he could hear the judge's gasping for breath. Suddenly, to his alarm, all movement from atop the riverbank ceased, and an ominous silence ensued. Then, to the accompaniment of a few displaced pebbles, a limp hand slid over the edge of the embankment to dangle loosely just above McCormick's head.

"Judge?" called McCormick nervously, reaching up to grasp that cold unresponsive hand. He yelled a little louder, his voice edged in alarm, his grip on the judge's hand tightening. "Judge, _answer me!"_

But there was no reply, and McCormick knew Hardcastle must have passed out, or worse. He had not allowed himself to think beyond the moment, about what must be happening there within the judge's battered body, or how his hard impact with the submerged tree might have caused further damage to internal organs already seriously compromised. Suddenly he knew he had to get up there and see what was going on, he had to go for help, he had to do _something_.

And then McCormick was climbing up the branch, almost missing footholds in his haste, and finally he was _there_, his feet still on the branch while his hand reached out for Hardcastle – and then the branch began to swing away from the embankment, its sandy foundation dissolving out into the river's flow. McCormick made a frantic grab for the bank as the branch teetered uncertainly, but his actions only caused the slender limb to sway more violently. Unable to hold McCormick's weight, the branch suddenly broke in two, and he found himself being catapulted back into the water, past the submerged tree, the stronger current pulling him directly into that area where the deeper water flowed.

The last thing McCormick saw as he sank helplessly beneath the water's churning surface was a brief glimpse of Hardcastle on the embankment. His motionless body lay framed by the scrub and willows that grew wild nearby, and his hand still dangled limply over the water, as though to rescue his drowning friend from the treacherous and unforgiving river that had taken him captive once more.

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Using up almost his last reserves of strength, McCormick came up spluttering and fought his way back to the embankment, but the current had already taken him almost fifty yards from his original location, and he knew he could never make his way that far back upstream. Reaching with frantic fingers for a handhold, he caught hold of a small bush that was stubbornly surviving in a small pocket of dirt set directly in the rock. Clinging to the bush with one hand, he felt all around, but except for the small gap where the bush grew, the rock was practically sheer, offering no means at all of escape.

The water was significantly deeper here, dangerously so, too shallow for McCormick to tread water easily, yet too deep for him to stand or to even get a good foothold. In fact, the entire riverbed seemed covered in loose sand that shifted with every passage of current, so that just as he thought he had found a hillock of soil to raise him higher, it would disintegrate beneath the toes of his bare feet. He thought about just letting go and allowing the current to take him further downstream, perhaps to where the riverbank was not so steep. But the current was so strong, he doubted he would be able to free himself again from its grip. The chances that he would instead be swept beneath the river's surface and summarily drowned were too high, the risks too great for the possible benefits to be gained, and he dismissed the idea without a second thought.

All McCormick could do was hang on for dear life to the bush, praying passionately that it wouldn't let him down as the bridge, and the broken branch, and even Hardcastle had all done. He was increasingly aware of the relentless, pulsating pain in his head, but as he clung to the little bush, and as the sand kept disappearing from beneath his feet, and as the current of the river tossed him again and again against the hard embankment, a song began to go round and round in his mind in time to the persistent throbbing. He paid scant attention until the words began to take shape in his mind, and he remembered ...

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Daytona Beach on a Saturday morning, very early indeed, with the sun just a rose-colored glow above the gentle Atlantic swell in the distance. McCormick and Corlette had plans to meet some friends for a late breakfast before heading to the speedway for the Busch race, and so McCormick had made an extra effort to beat E.J. to the bathroom. Leaving his roommate to complete his shaving in peace, McCormick took himself off to the hotel restaurant to indulge in a few solitary moments with a cup of coffee and a rare chance to watch the sun rising over a different ocean than the one to which he was accustomed.

McCormick had brought his coffee with him as he left the restaurant, sipping it as he wandered past the various conference rooms on his way to the beachside door and the brisk sea breeze beyond, when a burst of music came straight at him from the opened door to his right, almost causing him to spill his coffee in his surprise. Astonished, he stopped and peeked in at the rows upon rows of folding chairs that crossed the meeting room, a podium set up at the far end. He was amazed to see that, even at such an early hour, each and every chair was occupied, with a man in blue jeans standing behind the podium, enthusiastically waving his hand in time to the music provided by a middle-aged woman sitting at a piano to his right.

McCormick stood and listened to the song they were singing, trying to identify the vaguely familiar strains. Some Protestant song, he thought; he seemed to remember it from numerous prison church services ... _On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand _... As he watched, the song ended, and another man assumed the podium and began to speak.

McCormick turned away just as a desk clerk, one of the prettier ones, walked by and paused to smile at his bemusement. "You'd be surprised how many church groups come here for the races," she explained in a soft Southern accent, "and part of the package for this bunch was that they'd get a meeting room early each morning for their worship services. It's amazing how many of them show up at six a.m., even people from the other motels and hotels on the beach." She chuckled. "It's like they say, different strokes for different folks. One set wants whiskey and women delivered to their rooms in the dead of night, while another set wants an early wake-up call so they won't miss church."

The clerk smiled again, gazing through the door at the people who were now flipping through their hymnals, apparently gearing up for another song, and she added, "I think it's kinda nice myself. You know, I hear even some of the big-shot drivers are trying to get up something like it for the racing folks. If I were a racer, driving the speeds they do, I'd want a chance to talk to God before I went out on that track, too!" She glanced back at the wall clock hanging over the check-in counter at the far end of the hallway. "Gosh, I didn't realize it was so late. I gotta go. Nice talkin' with you." Then she was gone, long blond hair swinging across her shoulders as she trotted briskly toward the counter.

"Yeah, me too," McCormick answered absently, taking a sip of his coffee, and as he continued out the glass doors toward the beach, his last thought on the subject was that it _would_ be kind of nice for the racing people to have some sort of church to go to on race day Sundays – because, just like there weren't supposed to be any atheists in foxholes, any racer who pretended he didn't find himself saying a prayer or two at some point or another during a race was doing nothing but lying to himself. He grinned a little as he made his way through the sea oats toward the sun-touched waves: if anyone should know the truth of that, _he_ should ...

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... and now, here in an unknown river, close to drowning, with the best friend he had ever had dying not fifty yards away, the words of the song came back to him with a vengeance. Solid rocks and sinking sand. Boy, did he ever know something about sinking sand, as most of his existence had been spent in trying repeatedly to climb his way up, only to have the sand under his feet give way time and time again. And that _other_ solid rock, the mortal, flesh-and-blood one who had provided the foundation on which he had been rebuilding his life for the last three years, was crumbling away for good back on that riverbank upstream.

McCormick had been working his way back toward the faith slowly but surely, after nearly a lifetime of turmoil and doubt, but he wondered if he could get there in time to survive this latest disaster in the making. But like Hardcastle before him, he figured there was no time like the present to tie up a few loose ends, and so, as he clung exhaustedly to that staunch little bush, his body bruised from being constantly slammed against the unyielding rock, he did just as he had told Hardcastle he would do not an hour ago. He finally began making some sincere and much needed conversation with the Solid Rock of the song, and this time he made sure he used sentences longer than one or two words.

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McCormick's eyes snapped open at the realization that he had almost gone to sleep. His fingers were still gripping the bush, but they had long since grown numb, and he could feel nothing at all. The sandy soil that shifted beneath his feet seemed to be eroding away at an even faster rate, and soon it would be only the bush keeping him from being swept off to a certain fate downstream.

For the first time, he really understood how Hardcastle had felt earlier. He was so cold, so dreadfully tired, so ready to give up, and he knew it was only a matter of time before either the bush gave out or his grip did. But where there was life, there was hope; wasn't that what they said? So his face set determinedly, and he decided to give it one last try, one final attempt to climb out of this watery grave, away from this constantly shifting sand beneath him, onto that solid surface that rose so tantalizingly close before him. And he prayed that, just one more time, God might listen to his pleading and respond accordingly.

Aware that this was probably it as far as the bush was concerned, McCormick knew that there was no turning back. He looked up into the sky one last time above the distant hills, only to see that the clouds were gone, the sun shining low in the eastern sky. Bobbing in the water for a few seconds, he took a few deep breaths and clung for a few last moments to that stout little bush. Pulling himself inward and gathering up what remnants of strength he had left, he allowed himself to sink deeper in the water, his feet searching futilely for purchase against that sandy bottom. And then, holding tight to the bush with one hand, he pushed as hard as he could against the river's resistance and made one last desperate, heartrendingly gallant lunge up toward the edge of the riverbank, the equally gallant small bush providing his only real leverage.

As expected, the bush pulled free under the strain, dropping away from his grasp down into the current, as McCormick made a frantic grab with the other hand, his fingers barely latching onto a minute crack in the rock face. Clinging desperately to that fragile handhold, he pawed frenetically with his free hand against that hard, blank surface, reaching, reaching, his fingertips just brushing the top of the riverbank, but there was nothing there to catch hold of, nothing at all, _dear God, there's nothing there _...

And then a fist like iron grabbed his wrist, gripping it tightly, and he was being pulled slowly, oh so slowly, upwards.

McCormick was too tired, his mind too full of pain and fear, to feel more than a slight shock at this unexpected phenomenon. He tried to help as best he could, wrapping his own frozen hand tightly around that unknown wrist. His other hand, with its torn, bleeding fingernails, tried to maintain its tenuous hold on that tiny little crack in the otherwise impenetrable rock wall, and his bare feet searched for toeholds beneath the surface of the water.

And soon – none too soon – he could feel that iron fist pulling him over the edge of the bank. He was able to bring his other hand up and take a secure grasp on something that turned out to be the exposed root of a nearby willow tree. And then he was up and over, collapsed on the ground, well away from the edge, trying to catch his breath. His eyes were closed, both his head and his heart were pounding like jackhammers, and it was all he could do to keep from weeping helplessly at the incredible relief he felt.

All was silent in that little valley – all silent, that is, except for the sounds of the river, and the singing of the birds overhead, and the wind sighing through the sparse foliage of the willow trees that lined the riverbank. And then McCormick thought about his rescuer. He opened his eyes to find him lying right there within reach, face down, as limp and lifeless as he had been when McCormick had been forcibly plucked from his side all those long minutes ago. Only now, the marble face that was turned slightly to one side showed a peaceful serenity, as though he were only sleeping, and the lines of pain had faded almost to nothing.

McCormick just lay there, staring, unable to move, unable to think, paralyzed in the moment, before reaching out to touch the cold arm that lay awkwardly twisted near him. He swallowed, holding back his tears of pain and exhaustion and grief, because Hardcastle wouldn't have wanted him to cry. People like him and Hardcastle, they were stronger than that, they faced the world with clear eyes and determined faces, and they kept their hearts to themselves – even when those hearts were breaking into so many tiny pieces, making those grains of sand in the river seem like boulders by comparison.

With painful slowness, he rose to his knees and carefully turned Hardcastle's body onto its back, and then, propping himself against the willow tree, he pulled the judge's head and shoulders sideways onto his lap, cradling carefully against his chest that cherished head with its snowy white crown. He looked down into that cold, tranquil countenance, saying with a bitterness born of sorrow and shock, "So, Hardcase, you got what you wanted after all – _damn_ you."

Then he began stroking Hardcastle's hair gently, over and over again, as though the steady repetition could somehow brush away the terrible reality, and he whispered softly, "I didn't mean that. Oh, God, please, I didn't _mean_ that ..." And deep beneath the pounding that had increased four-fold in his own head, his mind began to form long-forgotten words, intertwined with other stray thoughts ... _Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil _..._ all other ground is sinking sand _...

Gradually McCormick's hand slowed its motion, sliding down to lay loosely against Hardcastle's shoulder, his head dropping to one side until it came to rest solidly against a lower branch of the willow tree. And he never acknowledged the voices that called faintly from the other side of the river, nor saw the boat that began crossing the flooded stream, its oars pulled by arms both strong and capable. He never heard the words that were softly spoken to him as his hand was gently removed from the judge's shoulder.

And he never saw the river again.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The moon that shone outside the darkened hospital room window was on the wane, which was a fairly good description of the way Mark McCormick felt right now. He lay on his side in the hospital bed, the only interior light coming from a small grilled lamp low on the wall near the door, and although his eyes were closed, the tension in his body betrayed his wakefulness. There was no use in trying to go back to sleep at this point, as he knew it was only a matter of minutes before his nurse returned once more, shaking his shoulder to wake him, just as someone had done every two hours since he had first awakened in this stark little room such a long time ago, or so it seemed anyway.

McCormick had been panic-stricken then, with no idea of where he was or how he had arrived there, and he honestly thought his heart might stop beating when he recalled those final moments on the riverbank. Afterwards, he had turned sullen, sarcastic, and increasingly hard to deal with – Hardcastle would have easily recognized the man he had become.

He knew he should contact Jack about the Edsel, but he couldn't even think about the car without feeling physically ill. He knew he should call people at home and let them know where he was, he knew he should call the judge's family and let them know what had happened, he knew he should make an effort to find out where they'd taken Hardcastle so he could make whatever final arrangements were necessary. But his head still ached with an unbearable pain, as did the heart that seemed to lie so heavily in his chest, and he didn't care if he ever again talked to anyone at anytime for any reason. He just didn't seem to care about anything anymore.

The nursing staff tending him had become increasingly weary of his bitter cynicism, though they suspected there might actually be a nice guy under all that attitude, if only one could get close enough to dig that deeply. Nevertheless, the situation had grown so tense that the head nurse had called his admitting physician to complain, who in turn had called the emergency room physician. The ER doctor in his turn had consulted with a fellow professional who he felt sure could prescribe the correct method of treatment for this unhappy and uncooperative young man, and then had devised his own strategy in accordance with that expert's suggestions.

So it was that about two o'clock that afternoon, McCormick received a visit from a middle-aged man in a white lab coat, his face long and thin, with a prominent and patrician nose upon which were perched some rather incongruous granny-type glasses. McCormick watched his entrance with a certain amount of speculative resentment, practically daring this stranger to make a single gesture of sympathy or good will.

The visitor was impervious to McCormick's obvious hostility, saying with a cold smile, "Mr. McCormick? You won't remember me, but I'm Dr. Hoffman, the emergency room physician here. I'm the one who saw you upon your arrival this morning."

"Yeah, well, hi," McCormick answered, containing his sulkiness with an effort; this man just might be able to answer some of the questions he had not yet had the heart to ask. "I'm sorry, you're right, I don't remember you. But then, I was pretty out of it when I got here, wasn't I?"

"That's an understatement," Hoffman replied, his smile becoming slightly more genuine. "I'm afraid you'd been having rather a bad time of it, and your body – especially your brain – just shut down under the stress. It happens."

There was a lengthy silence, as patient and doctor solemnly scrutinized each other.

"So, Doc," McCormick began nervously, "what can I do for you?"

"Well, Mr. McCormick, your attending physician and your nurses are a little concerned that you are not responding to treatment the way you should be, and Dr. Shore contacted me to see if I had noticed anything particularly out of the way in the emergency room, which as it happens, I did not. As he is holding clinic right now, he asked me to delve a little deeper into the mystery." He glanced at the metal chart in his hand, clucking faintly, before looking back up at McCormick's glowering face. "It seems that ever since you woke up, you've been somewhat recalcitrant about having your vitals checked and taking your meds – in general being a little, shall we say, difficult?"

"I have my reasons," muttered McCormick, staring at the scratched and bruised hands that lay loosely clasped before him on the blanket. He flashed the doctor a look that seemed partly miserable, partly ashamed, as he said unwillingly, "Look, I don't want to be a problem. I'll try to do better, okay? That's the best I can promise."

"Yes, well, that's nice, Mr. McCormick, but I really think it's your mental attitude that concerns them more than your behavior does. For one thing, you seem far more antagonistic than the situation warrants, despite your head injury." Hoffman watched McCormick, who showed no visible reaction beyond a self-conscious grimace. The doctor continued with a thoughtful frown, "For another thing, you have not once mentioned your friend, the man with whom you were found at the time of your rescue, which strikes us all as a bit odd."

At Hoffman's last statement, McCormick flinched, then looked toward the window, as he answered shortly, "No. I haven't."

The doctor assumed a meditative manner as he remarked, "I see. He was correct, then. I suspected something of the sort, but _he_ was quite specific about it."

McCormick turned back to look at the doctor in confusion. "Specific about what?"

"Your conviction that your friend is dead."

McCormick stared at Hoffman, his face blanching to the whiteness of the sheet against which he lay.

"What do you mean, my _conviction_ that he's dead?" His mouth felt dry as parchment, and for some reason his heart began to gallop, turning the very effort of breathing into a challenge. Despite himself, he asked the question to which he wasn't sure he could bear to hear the answer. "_Who_ was it said that?"

"My, um, bedside consultant," Hoffman answered with a faint smile. "We felt that under the circumstances, we needed an expert on what makes a man like Mark McCormick tick, and he was only too happy to oblige."

McCormick wondered if the sound of the blood pounding in his ears was as audible to the doctor as it was to him. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, preparing himself for certain disappointment, but he could not keep the entreaty from his face as he asked, in a voice almost wooden with self-control, "And just who _is_ this expert on what makes a man like Mark McCormick tick?"

"Why, your friend, of course," the doctor replied, as though the answer were obvious. "Judge Hardcastle."

0000000000

Ten minutes later, McCormick lay back against his pillow again, carefully sipping a glass of water, while Dr. Hoffman watched him, his gaze half-amused, half-concerned. "Are you feeling better now?"

"Yeah," McCormick answered with a shaky smile. "I'm sorry, Doctor. But you just would not believe the stuff Hardcastle and I have been through the last twenty-four hours or so. You really threw me a curve-ball there."

"I can imagine," Hoffman answered. He studied this rather engaging young man, so different now that the grimness was gone from his mouth and the bruised look from his eyes. "You know, I wish you'd said something earlier, Mr. McCormick. Both Dr. Shore and I made it very clear to the nursing staff that you were to be reassured when you asked about Mr. Hardcastle. But you never asked."

"No," McCormick answered, tiredly leaning his head back against the pillow and closing his eyes. "Why should I? He was dead." He could still see the limp body as it lay on the riverbank, the marble face with its serene expression of painless peace, and he looked up at the doctor with distressed eyes. "I swear to God, Doctor, I thought he was dead. I could have _sworn_ he was dead."

"Well, he's not," said Hoffman briskly. "He's awake, alert, and is even now undergoing tests to determine the extent of his illness and injuries. Then he's heading to the Intensive Care Unit so that he can be monitored. We don't consider his condition to be extremely critical at this juncture, but I won't lie to you, Mr. McCormick, he's still a _very_ sick man, and at his age, we prefer to take no chances. He was given a hefty dose of morphine upon admission, which relieved a good deal of the pain he was experiencing, and we will certainly continue his pain management until we determine just what course of action to take. All in all, I believe he's doing quite well considering the circumstances, although I fear even another few hours' delay might have decreed an entirely different outcome. Oh, dear!" he added, as he glanced at his watch and began trotting to the door. "It's later than I thought." Just as he reached the door, he stopped abruptly and turned back to McCormick. "Wait a minute, I forgot something."

As McCormick watched in curiosity, the doctor began searching through one pocket of his lab coat and fished up a crumpled piece of paper, torn from what appeared to be a prescription pad. "I have a few messages for you." He peered through his tiny glasses at the paper. "Let's see ... your wallet and Judge Hardcastle's are in the hospital safe, and he made my ER nurse put an extra couple of C-notes in yours, so you'll have something to fall back on when you are discharged. And, mmm, yes, he talked to someone named Jack ..."

McCormick just sat there, staring in amazement, as Hoffman looked up with a smile. "I'm afraid Radiology lost its receptionist for a while there, Judge Hardcastle can be very ... persuasive." He brought his attention back to the slip of paper. "Yes, well, he's told Jack about the car, and he had Jenny call someone named Professor Lyons at the law school, they're not expecting you until next week –"

"Next _week_!" interjected McCormick incredulously, but before he could continue, he was in turn interrupted rather brusquely.

"Yes, that's what he said, 'next week'. I have places to be, young man, so if you want to hear the rest of this, you'd better pipe down," Hoffman said, his severity offset by the twinkle in his eye. "Hmmm, where was I? Ah, yes, he said to tell you that he talked to a man named Frank, so that someone in Los Angeles would have some idea where you both were. _And_," he continued with a sharp look at McCormick, "Judge Hardcastle said that you were to behave yourself and not cause any trouble. So _please_, Mr. McCormick," the doctor requested with a return to his austere manner, "_do _behave yourself and stop causing trouble."

McCormick's answering smile was a little unsteady, as memories of a white-haired head resting lifelessly against his chest mercifully receded; clearly Hardcastle, even ill as he was, could still manage an operation on the scale of the D-Day invasion, provided he was given enough morphine first. Hoffman watched him from the door with compassionate eyes. "Mr. McCormick, I can't tell you that everything is going to be all right. Even if I knew for sure, which I don't, my malpractice insurer insists that I not make any such rash statements. However, I do think I can assure you that, unless there's an unusually drastic deterioration in his condition, Judge Hardcastle will still be very much with us at this time tomorrow." Then he was gone, the door drifting silently closed behind him.

After that much-needed and much-appreciated visit, McCormick found that he was actually able to relax a little, and once he had finally allowed the nurses to give him some pain medication, the headache that had made his existence almost intolerable for the last eighteen hours had at long last begun to diminish. As a result, he slept heavily the rest of the afternoon and on into the night, though his slumber had been somewhat intermittent, thanks to the nurses who insisted on waking him regularly to take his vitals, to give him meds, or simply to rouse him. His head injury had turned out to be a concussion, rather than the skull fracture both he and Hardcastle had feared it to be, but it seemed there was still medical protocol to be observed, which appeared to dictate that his rest be doled out only in two-hour allotments.

Although his physical state might have shown some improvement, his mental state was once again on the decline by the time the sun had set, as he had heard nothing of Hardcastle since the doctor's visit. The lack of information was beginning to worry him; as a result, all his communications had again begun to take on a distinctly querulous note, and his inevitable question to whichever nurse was attending him at the time was a snappish, "How's Hardcastle?"

And so here he was, waiting for the inescapable wakeup call, almost exactly twenty-four hours since he and the judge had driven headlong into a nightmare. Sure enough, there was a soft swishing sound as the door to his room opened quietly, and a glare of light as the wall switch was flipped on. This was followed by the squeaky sound of rubber-lined wheels traveling across the tile floor; it must be time for his blood-pressure check as well. He shut his eyes against the light, then turned over and lay on his back, mumbling irritably, "Yeah, I know, time to wake up. How's Hardcastle?"

"Well, sport, if you'd open your eyes and use 'em for a change, you just might find out."

At the sound of _that _voice, McCormick's eyes flew open in shocked surprise, and he shot upright as if he were yanked by an invisible rope – only to find himself the next moment crying out in pain and collapsing back onto the bed, muttering to himself, "Stupid, McCormick. That was so _stupid_."

"Can't argue with you there, kiddo."

Turning his head slowly on the pillow, McCormick could see the judge sitting in a wheelchair by the bed, his face pale and drawn, but nonetheless showing definite signs of improvement when compared to that still form on the riverbank. "Judge, what the hell are you doing here? You're supposed to be in ICU!"

"Yeah, I know," Hardcastle agreed, looking McCormick over with an appraising eye. "How do you feel?"

"A _whole_ lot better for seeing you," McCormick said with such complete and heartfelt candor that Hardcastle blinked in surprise. "This has been a _really_ lousy day, Hardcastle." He couldn't resist a small grin. "And I hear you've been a pretty busy beaver."

"Yeah, the ER doc told me he gave you my messages. Look, the insurance papers are in the safe too, I had 'em folded up in my back pants pocket all the time, and believe it or not, you can still read 'em, even if they _are_ sorta on the damp side. Anyway, the girls down in the office know you might need 'em. I think Jack's gonna be a little hard to deal with about that car."

"Can't blame him for that, I guess. Is the insurance gonna cover it?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fairly sure it will. Jack's insurance company might think otherwise, but we'll see." There was a gleam in Hardcastle's eyes, as though the chance of taking on Jack and his insurance company in a court of law was a development devoutly to be hoped for.

McCormick lay quietly against his pillows, content to watch the judge sitting there in the wheelchair, managing the world – their world – in that inimitable way only Hardcastle could pull off. Then he was struck by a sudden thought. "What's this about me getting off the rest of the week? Judge, that wasn't part of my deal with my professors!"

"Well, maybe not, but I talked to Lyons, and I told him that I never heard of anyone having to do as much work as you did just to miss five days of classes, and you should be covered at least until the end of the week. Lyons wasn't much inclined to argue; it's only two extra days, after all, and I was pretty, ah, firm about the whole thing."

At the mention of the extra credit work, McCormick's face clouded, although he said nothing, and after a short silence, he said, "How're _you_ feeling?"

Hardcastle leaned back in his wheelchair. "A little numb, is the best way to call it. I thought that morphine would knock me right out, but it seems to be having just the opposite effect. Doesn't matter to me, so long as it takes the pain away." He eyed McCormick in thoughtful speculation. "Wrote me off kinda quick there, didn't you, McCormick?"

"Yeah ..." McCormick replied, his face a study in unhappiness. "But you weren't there, you didn't see ..." He flushed under Hardcastle's disbelieving stare. "Well, you _weren't_ there, not really." He leaned back, eyes closed, lost in a memory he thought he would probably never forget as long as he lived. "God, Judge, I'm so sorry. But you had been hurting so bad anyway, and you were out cold when I got tossed back in the river, and then when I saw you lying face down like that, and I remembered what you'd said back in the car ..." He glanced over at Hardcastle with the beginnings of a sheepish smile. "Let's be real, Kemosabe, even the Lone Ranger can't be expected to keep _all_ his promises."

Hardcastle waved a dismissive hand. "Ah, it's alright, kid. It's not like you were sharp as a tack right then, and maybe I did cross the line with that Superman routine. The last thing I remember is making sure you were still alive and breathing – wasn't much doubt about that, you were dragging in enough air to deplete the ozone – but I s'pose I'd gone as far as I was going at that point. Anyway, after that I didn't know anything about anything until I heard those guys hollering from across the other side of the river."

McCormick stared at him blankly. "What guys? You mean the guys who found us?" A sudden, rather unwelcome recollection struck McCormick, and he remarked, with an unconvincingly casual air, "So you actually _saw_ the guys who found us?"

"Yeah, sure," Hardcastle replied, a slight twitching of his lips his only visible reaction to this less-than-artless inquiry. "There were three of 'em in a Jeep, some of those earthquake research people doin' a little reconnaissance work after the quakes. They spotted the car headed down the river, so they drove upstream and saw us on the other bank. Lucky for us they were pulling a boat."

"Yeah, lucky for us," McCormick echoed. "So, um, you were actually _awake_ when they came to get us?"

McCormick could have sworn there was nothing more in Hardcastle's expression than bemusement as he glanced at him curiously. "Well, it was more a case of fading in and out most of the time. I was a lot more awake than you were, though."

"Oh."

By now McCormick's flush had returned full force, but Hardcastle remained serenely oblivious to this odd phenomenon. "Yep, you were out like a light. I was sorta glad, really, it seemed to me you'd already been through enough." He studied McCormick soberly. "You're still lookin' pretty peaked, kiddo. How's the head?"

"It hurts," McCormick replied with a sigh, his color fading as his thoughts turned inward once more. "I'm beginning to think it's gonna hurt me for the rest of my life. But it's a little better." He fidgeted with the sheet, before looking up with a troubled expression. "Look, Judge, about what I said this morning, back in the car – I know I was being a real bastard. But you gotta understand, it's just that ..." His voice faded into silence.

"... you thought I was runnin' out on you," finished Hardcastle.

McCormick looked at him in surprise. "Well ... yeah."

"Well, you might've been right, although that's not the way I was looking at it. I honestly meant it for the best, but ... I think maybe now I can see where my kid might've been coming from, and even your dad, too, 'cause I just never realized how different things look from that side of the fence." Hardcastle hitched himself up a little in the wheelchair and rested his head on his hand, a faint grimace revealing that his latest dose of morphine was beginning to wear off. "You know, I've been thinking about it some since we got here to the hospital; the ER doc had already told me you'd be okay, and it's not like I had much else to do while I was lying on all those tables, having all those tests done."

"Judge, you're not making any sense. _What_ looks different from that side of the fence?"

Hardcastle plucked absently at a loose string on the sleeve on his hospital gown. "Well, now that I've been there myself, I can see that the thing with my kid might not have been exactly the way I thought it was. Like that thing this morning." He looked up to meet McCormick's eyes steadily. "See, I honestly thought that letting you go on by yourself woulda been the best thing for both of us, 'cause I was gonna be nothing but dead weight, and it wasn't right that you should get pulled down with me. But you didn't see it that way; you thought I was just taking the easy way out and leaving you to pick up the pieces, and that wasn't it at all. Stupid of me, I shoulda seen that one coming a mile away."

McCormick had a stricken look on his face. "Judge ..."

Hardcastle never noticed the softly spoken interruption as he shifted his gaze across to the window, darkly opaque now that the room light was on. "Anyway, it hit me later that that mighta been the way my kid was thinking too, figuring that taking himself off was the best thing he could do for both me and him, to give us a break from the fighting and all. I bet it never even occurred to him how much it would wind up hurting us both – until it was too late to do anything about it." He shook his head sadly. "It's amazing, the dumb things you can think, and the stupid things you can do, trying to figure out how to do the right thing, not only for yourself but for other people, too. And all the time you're just making things a whole lot worse." He returned his gaze to McCormick, rubbing his nose pensively. "I guess maybe I just wasn't thinking too straight this morning."

"I guess maybe you weren't, but looking back, I don't think I was exactly centered between the ditches either." McCormick smiled at him crookedly. "But you know, you still kept your promise, and considering the way I got it out of you, the least I can do is keep mine. It won't be easy, but I'll do it somehow."

Pulling up his knees under the sheet, McCormick leaned forward in the bed and propped his chin on his crossed arms. "You know, Sonny said something, way back when we first met, about how _he_ had a side to the story, too. I suppose he ought to at least get a chance to tell his side, provided I can keep him pinned down long enough to get that far. And even if I don't much like what he's got to say, I ought to give him another chance or two, regardless of whether or not I think he deserves 'em." He shot a glance at Hardcastle. "Seems to me someone else thought I was worth taking a chance on; maybe it's about time I passed on the favor."

"Maybe so," Hardcastle responded equably. "You never know how things might turn out. I wouldn't hold my breath hoping for law school, though."

McCormick grinned. "Nah, I'll be happy if we can just keep him away from the bad guys for awhile. Anything beyond that would be so much gravy." He changed the subject, cocking an inquisitive eye at his visitor. "So, tell me, Hardcase, what on earth are you doing, roaming the hospital halls at ..." McCormick glanced at the clock on the wall, "... ten o'clock at night? And why aren't you on a stretcher?"

"Well, I'm in a wheelchair because I told 'em I was damn sick and tired of lying on things about as comfortable as cast iron; they weren't happy about it, but apparently they figured it was easier to humor me than fight with me, and after all, it was gonna be my funer—uh, well, let's just say they gave in. As for what I'm doing here, we were on our way back from Nuclear Medicine – ICU's right down the hall, you know – and I talked my nurse into leaving me here while she went to have a cup of coffee in the nurses' lounge. Some scan my doctor ordered at the last minute, but it's supposed to be the last one for a while. Hopefully I can get some sleep now," Hardcastle said, a scowl clouding his face for a second. "You know, that doctor's a weird duck, all gloom and doom; the nurses tell me he _hates_ the idea of any kind of surgery, some sort of holistic quack who took a wrong turn, I reckon." He cocked an eye at McCormick. "How 'bout you? You getting any sleep?"

"Kinda," McCormick answered in a dejected tone, "in between being woken up every two hours, on the hour. That'll probably go on all night."

"Yeah, probably so." There was a soft tap at the door. "Ah, my chauffeur's back. Better be heading homeward."

McCormick cast a mock-disdainful glance at the wheelchair. "So those are your new wheels, huh?"

"Yep," Hardcastle answered with a grin. "You oughta see my driver. Heck of a lot prettier than my old one."

"You'd better be nice to your old one, Hardcase, or you just might find yourself being carted back to Malibu in something a lot less comfortable than that wheelchair. You know, we _are_ gonna be needing a way to get back home, now I think about it." McCormick's face turned reflective. "I wonder if we'll be able to get _anyone_ to rent us a car once they find out we totaled an Edsel?"

"I got news for you, kiddo." Hardcastle wheeled himself toward the door, where a nurse, every bit as attractive as the judge had boasted, waited with a patient smile. "We get out of this place, we're taking a cab home, I don't care how much it costs. We'll let someone else worry about doing the driving for a while." He glanced back at McCormick's exhausted, uneasy face. "Look, McCormick, try to get some rest. We're through the worst now, and it'll all look better tomorrow. I'll see you in the morning, okay?" He reached up to hit the light switch, and then the nurse was piloting his wheelchair out of the door and out of sight.

And as McCormick lay back down and turned onto his side, he only wished he could believe the judge's words. But all he could feel was an oppressive sense of foreboding, as though the worst was still yet to come.

0000000000

Hardcastle woke early on Wednesday morning to the sun streaming through the window of his room in Intensive Care. He thought they must have hung yet another IV during the night; he seemed to be surrounded by clear plastic bags, all with tubing that ran from various directions to intersect at the port taped tightly to his right arm. He hated hospitals, and he hated medications, but he had to admit, the IV's must be doing some good; the pain was all but gone under the influence of the morphine and whatever other painkillers were contained in those bags.

Even the monitoring equipment, with all its wires and cheeps and whirrs, didn't bother him as much as he had thought it would. All that plagued him now was an immense tiredness that seemed to saturate every inch of skin, every muscle, every tendon, even the marrow of every bone – that, and a sneaking suspicion that soon he would be occupying yet another room, with a huge bright light over a _really_ hard table, surrounded by people wearing green scrubs and white masks, with one of them holding another type of mask over his face and telling him to count backwards from one hundred ... ninety-nine ... _ninety-eight _..._ ninety-seven _...

He had almost counted himself back to sleep when he realized that, off to his left, the bed rail had been let down, and his hand was being turned this way and that, very gently, as though it were too fragile to be handled in the normal way. Turning his head slowly in that direction, he saw a pale, ill-looking McCormick seated beside him in a hard plastic institutional-type chair, the bruise on his temple painted in varying hues of red and blue and purple. He was dressed in a set of blue scrubs probably begged from some sympathetic nurse or housekeeper, although the plastic bracelet on his wrist was clear evidence of his continued inpatient status. He appeared to be making a careful examination of the back of Hardcastle's hand, his brow furrowed and his expression deeply troubled. Concerned, Hardcastle asked softly, "What's wrong, kiddo?"

McCormick looked up in consternation. "You have liver spots."

Hardcastle chuckled weakly. "Well, that's the sort of thing that comes with age, sport." His eyes softened at the distress in McCormick's face. "It's not like they hurt any, you know."

McCormick continued to study the hand that lay lax within his own, the spidery lines crisscrossing closely so that the skin looked as if it had been crumpled like tissue paper and smoothed out again. Finally he glanced up from beneath lowered brows and said, "It's not right, Judge. It's not right that you got liver spots, and I never noticed. It's not right that you got sick, and I never noticed. Dammit, Judge, you might have _died_, and I might never have noticed!"

Hardcastle couldn't restrain a slight grin at that last passionately uttered declaration. "I don't know, McCormick, I think that last one probably wouldn't have got past you for long. As for the getting-sick part, I sorta went to a little trouble to make sure you _didn't_ notice."

McCormick's head came up at that, his eyes flashing with anger. "But I'm your friend, I'm _supposed_ to notice stuff like that. I'm supposed to be _around_ to notice stuff like that!" He grimaced in pain both physical and emotional, then resumed his intense study of Hardcastle's hand. His expression hardened as the judge's hand closed firmly around his own, but his eyes never wavered from their original focus.

"McCormick. Look at me." Hardcastle tightened his grip with a strength that belied his apparent weakness, so that McCormick flinched in surprised pain. "_Look_ at me." Waiting until McCormick lifted his head once more, Hardcastle released his hand and said quietly, "Do you recall back in Arizona, when those rednecks stole your money and you got shot? Remember what you told me about what friends are for?"

"I said that when you fall down, friends pick you back up again."

"And you were right, that's what being a friend is all about. But kiddo, friends aren't responsible for keeping each other from falling down in the first place. Yeah, if they see you starting to fall, they can try to keep you from hitting the pavement, but it's just not their place to protect you from everything that might make you fall down to begin with. There's got to be some personal accountability somewhere." He smiled with an unaccustomed gentleness. "Kid, you're my best friend, you know that. But it's never been your job to make sure that I ate right, or slept well, or got my exercise. Sure, you tried to keep me on the straight and narrow when I slipped up, just like I did you, but in the end, it's up to each of us to make the right choices and do the right thing. This time, I made a couple of really bad choices, and one of 'em was not saying anything to you about what was going on. I'm just sorry you got yourself a nasty concussion because of it."

McCormick stood abruptly and walked to the window, refusing to be comforted. He stared out unseeingly for a few moments, before turning to lean back against the window frame. "Okay, let's say you're right. I still think that if I'd just been around more, I coulda done _something_, maybe mouthed off and got you angry enough to go get some help. I can't pick you up when you fall down if I'm not there to see it happen."

Hardcastle sighed. "McCormick, even if you'd been there twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, chances are it wouldn't have done any good. It's kind of a strange thing about human nature, we can notice things going wrong in other people's lives, but when it comes to our own little worlds, we're blind as bats." He paused, then continued slowly, "Let me tell you a little story about how ol' Hardcastle blew the big one, okay?"

He shifted his gaze past McCormick's shoulder to the window, at the hills rising purple in the distance. "A long time ago, back when Nancy first got sick, I noticed that there was something a little, well, not right, like her not being quite as energetic as she'd always been, or not as anxious to go out as she used to be. But she never complained or anything, just kept doing her housework and working in her flowerbeds like she'd always done. When I'd ask her about it, she'd just laugh it off, make excuses about the change of life and stuff like that. So _I_ just took her at her word and shrugged it off myself. After all, I was busy, and surely she'd say _something_ if there was anything serious going on, right? We went on like that for weeks, and then D.D. came down for a visit. She only had to take one look at her sister, and that's when the truth came out. And by then, it was too late."

Hardcastle paused deliberately, waiting until McCormick's eyes reluctantly came up to meet his. "Don't you see, McCormick? Sometimes you can be _too_ close to someone, so that you can't see the big picture for all the little stuff that keeps getting your attention. Nancy was getting sicker and sicker all the time, and I couldn't see it the way D.D. did because I was too close, and because Nancy was too good at pulling the wool over my eyes. She did the same thing I was doing to you, see, stayin' out of my way and hiding all the bad stuff, so I wouldn't catch on. Did I blame myself? Hell, yes, I blamed myself, I still blame myself sometimes, but you know something, McCormick? Even if I'd seen it from the very first second, I still couldn't have done anything about it unless Nancy was willing to do something about it first. I coulda ranted and raved, and made all sorts of a fuss, and it still wouldn't have made any difference unless she was willing to take that first step.

"That's the way it is with you and me, kiddo." Hardcastle paused for a quick breath; he felt completely drained, and his breathing had begun to develop that irritating hitch again. But it was terribly important to him that the kid get this, and get it _now_, before anything else happened to knock 'em both back down to where they couldn't crawl their way back up – and he was afraid that McCormick was already standing way too close to the edge as it was. "I mean, look what happened when you _did_ find out what was going on. Did it mean you got me to the doctor right off? Nope, because I was being stupid and stubborn – in other words, my usual donkey self. And there wasn't one blessed thing you could do about it. Even if you'd tied me up, dumped me in the bed of the pickup, and hauled me to the emergency room, you couldn't have made 'em treat me if I refused to sign the paperwork." He smiled faintly at the motionless figure by the window. "So cut yourself a little slack, okay, McCormick? There's nothing about this that's your fault, nothing at all."

McCormick looked at him from across the room for a moment, before pulling away from the window frame and padding softly to the side of the bed. Then, staring down impassively at Hardcastle's suddenly wary face, he reached out and carefully pulled the neck of Hardcastle's hospital gown to one side, revealing a colorful bruising on the judge's shoulder rivaling that on his own forehead. He cocked a cynical eye at Hardcastle's dismayed expression. "So nothing about this is my fault, huh, Hardcase? It's funny about those bruises, they're exactly where they would be if I'd actually done what I dreamed about doing, instead of just dreaming about it." He eased the gown back into place and stepped back silently, his expression haunted. "I thought you said I didn't hit you."

"You didn't _hit_ me," Hardcastle replied stubbornly, as though this particular hair wasn't even worth splitting. "You just kinda _leaned_ on me – in every sense of the word."

The judge watched worriedly as McCormick closed his eyes, clinging to the back of the chair with a white-knuckle grip. He seemed to sway as he stood there; plainly the kid needed to be back in bed, but Hardcastle hated to see him go without somehow getting him to see the light. "McCormick, would you just _listen_ to me for once? You had a really bad concussion, I thought you had a skull fracture, and for about five minutes, you didn't really know where you were or what you were doing. But it never woulda happened if I'd just used some sense about this whole thing from the beginning, about seeing the doctor, about telling you what was going on, about going to George's funeral. This is _not your fault_, it's all my doing, and you know, kiddo," Hardcastle said with a reluctant glance toward the cubicle door, "I expect it's about time I paid the piper."

As though deliberately timed, a shadow fell across Hardcastle's bed, and they both looked up to see Hardcastle's doctor standing there in the doorway, a small, pale man with a very somber countenance. McCormick instinctively moved closer to the bed, gripping the bed sheets with frightened fingers.

Hardcastle eyed the doctor as he would a tardy visitor. "Hiya, Doc. We were just waiting for you."

"Mr. Hardcastle," the doctor began, glancing uncertainly at McCormick.

"Doc, this is a friend of mine, Mark McCormick. You could say that he watches out for me – when I let him, that is." Hardcastle cast a half-humorous glance at the tense figure standing beside him, but McCormick was watching the doctor with an expression more often associated with that of a deer caught in the glare of headlights. Hardcastle sighed and added with finality, "He stays, Doc. He's gotta know the score sometime, and it may as well be now. He'll be okay, won't you, kiddo?"

McCormick cleared his throat and glanced back down at the sheet in his hands, looking as though his headache had suddenly returned with a vengeance. Hardcastle saw his eyes come up to meet those of the doctor, who looked directly at the kid with such a serious, such an incredibly _sad_ expression, that McCormick's face instantly lost what little color it possessed. And then the doctor spoke, his words deep and solemn, for all the world like the verbal equivalent of a death knell. "I'm so very, very, very, very, _very _sorry. I know this is the very worst news I can deliver, but it must be very soon, I'm afraid ..."

0000000000

Those were the last words that McCormick heard with any clarity. Although the sound of the doctor's voice still registered faintly, the actual comments were lost in the deafening roar that raged in McCormick's head, like the crashing of waves against a rocky shoreline. His mind tried to grapple with the doctor's statement – dear God, _no_, not this, not after everything they had been through, that long, cold night in that overturned car, the way they had fought so hard together just to survive the nightmare that was the river, the way the judge had rallied there at the end, if only for McCormick's sake, and how they had somehow still managed to get past it all – until now.

McCormick stood there, staring at all the IV's, the monitor wires that snaked beneath Hardcastle's hospital gown, and abruptly he realized that Hardcastle had been right all along: it _would_ have been more merciful to let him drown in the car as he wanted, quickly and painlessly, rather than force him back to a debilitating, agonizing death like this. And with that final thought, the dogged self-control that had kept McCormick functioning for the last sixty hours finally began to give way, the pain and the stress and the sorrow combining to increase the burden that lay so heavily on his soul, so that his fortitude could no longer sustain him. He could feel his face going slack, his legs beginning to fold under him as though his bones had turned to water, or sand: _just like the sand in that river_, he thought muzzily.

Out of the mistiness invading his mind came the sound of Hardcastle's voice, sharp in anger, and the doctor's oddly indignant reply; the voices were clear, but the words were still strangely indistinguishable. Then he heard Hardcastle speaking to _him_, calling his name repeatedly, softly at first, louder, louder still, and then there was an alarmed yell that reverberated around both the small ICU cubicle and the hollow chambers of his pounding head, _"We need a nurse in here!"_

After that, there were more noises, a curiously hostile hissing between Hardcastle and the doctor, the soft shush of rubber-soled shoes quickly crossing the tiled flooring. Just as he began sliding inexorably downward to the floor, something hard was shoved against his knees, and he sat down abruptly on the plastic chair, his bruised forehead coming down to bounce painfully against the edge of the mattress.

As the sound of urgent, concerned voices flowed about him, McCormick just sat there motionless, the top of his head barely making contact with the mattress as he stared down at the tiles that seemed to revolve drunkenly beneath his bare feet. Suddenly, for no reason, a memory came bobbing to the surface of his rapidly-receding consciousness, a memory buried so deeply that he hadn't even been aware of its existence. He could see a shattered toy of some sort lying in pieces on a bare wood floor, and sitting there sobbing beside it was a small child – and he himself was that child, crying as though his heart would break. Then came the memory of two strong arms picking him up and holding him close, a hand gently stroking his hair, a voice – Sonny Daye's voice – murmuring in a soft, comforting croon, "It's all right, Mark, don't cry, we're gonna fix it, it's gonna be okay, kid ..."

The memory faded as his eyes began to fill, and lifting his head, he laid his cheek tiredly against the cool, crumpled sheets of Hardcastle's bed, his fingers still somehow tangled in their folds. His conscious thoughts gradually lost substance, collapsing against one another like dominoes. But deep down, within the innermost part of his being, he could feel an intense desire for the same warmth to enfold him now as had been contained in that single memory, a desperate craving for someone to gather him up and hold him close, the way his father had once held him, protecting him against the bleak realities that now seemed to stretch ahead into infinity. And in his heart, he knew that from this day on, he would never find such comfort, such a sense of _security_, ever again in his lifetime – and at that thought, his mind at last began to shut down in involuntary retreat from a certainty he could not bear to face. His final coherent thought came in the form of a desperate plea. _Oh, God, please, we've both come so far. Don't let it all end like this._

Slowly McCormick's hands began to slide off the bed as his fingers loosened their grasp on the sheets, and then there were other hands, nurse's hands, resting firmly against his shoulders, holding him securely in place. He was remotely aware of other things as well: the sound of material rustling nearby, a low-voiced conversation over his head, the mattress shifting precariously beneath his cheek.

And then, in his last few seconds of awareness, there came the weight of a hand laid gently across his aching head, carefully smoothing the unruly curls away from the still tender lump that lay exposed on his bruised forehead, and a gruff, familiar voice brought a longed-for reassurance as he finally drifted into a merciful unconsciousness. "It's okay, McCormick, we're gonna fix it. Don't you worry, kiddo, it's all gonna be okay."


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

_"It's all gonna be okay…"_

The words seemed to echo around the dark old church, the flickering light from the sconces on the walls failing to penetrate into the deepest corners of the cavernous room. The rows of lit votives to one side barely illuminated the Virgin Mary that hung suspended on the wall above them, the shadows wavering about her painted features, concealing the many years of candle smoke that darkened the pallor of her complexion.

The dimness was especially intense in comparison to the heartbreakingly beautiful March day outside. An overnight shower had washed away the ever-present smog, revealing a crystal clear view of the Santa Monica Mountains standing majestically to the northwest, while the gentle Pacific breezes brought fluffy white clouds scurrying across a deep blue canopy. The dazzling weather was all the more remarkable for its well-timed appearance on this, the second day of spring.

Mark McCormick had stood outside the old church in the cool air of that Sunday morning, leaning casually against a parking meter as he waited for early Mass to end. He had never before visited this particular church, located deep within the old section of Los Angeles; he had stopped on an impulse that he could not explain, even to himself. Even now, he was on the verge of flight, but as a scattering of the faithful began to exit through the heavy oak doors, he forced himself to remain where he was. Waiting until the last of the attendees had made their final farewells and set off to other destinations, he quickly crossed the sidewalk, as though he might yet lose his nerve, and started up the stone steps that were deeply sunk by the many feet that had trod them since the church was built back in the late 1880's.

McCormick's face gave away nothing of his thoughts, dark glasses concealing whatever might have been revealed in his blue eyes, but as he hesitated at the church's entrance, he noticed a small Protestant church standing on the opposite corner, sounds of singing issuing forth from its opened windows. Absently he listened to the music; suddenly the corner of his mouth twitched, and he slowly removed his sunglasses, casting a glance up toward the sun-kissed sky. As he turned and passed through the doors, the final words of the old hymn drifted faintly in the air behind him. _All other ground is sinking sand _...

Entering the vestibule, McCormick paused at the font of holy water, dipping his fingers into its coolness and crossing himself, before walking through another set of doors into the sanctuary. Blinking in the sudden darkness, he slowly made his way down the center aisle, his face closed and remote, pale against the smoky darkness. As he came to a halt between the two front pews, his serious eyes searched out and met those of the Christ figure who looked out from the large painted Crucifix hanging over the high altar. He stood there for several minutes, looking up into those strangely knowing eyes in solemn contemplation; then, with a slight smile of kinship, he crossed himself again and knelt at the chancel rail.

McCormick remained there for a long time, head bowed in deep concentration, only vaguely aware of a quick splinter of light piercing the dimness as the sanctuary doors opened and closed with a well-oiled quietness. As his lips moved in a silent recitation of barely-remembered phrases, he felt someone kneel beside him, and glancing over to his right, he saw the old parish priest deep in prayer at his side. At the end of his own time of prayer, McCormick sat back against his heels and leaned forward to rest his forehead tiredly against his tightly clasped hands. Then he rose to his feet, made his reverence to the calmly watching figures on the walls, and turned to slowly retrace his steps up the long, polished aisle, his face as grave as when he had entered.

Just as he reached the end of the aisle, he paused beside the very last pew to his left, his expression softening as he looked down at the white-haired man who sat slumped in the seat, head back, eyes closed, a faint snoring coming from deep in his throat. McCormick chuckled, a quirky grin chasing away some of the gravity from his face, as he leaned over and shook the sleeper's shoulder. "Hey, Hardcase, wake up. It doesn't look so good, you know, snoring in church."

Hardcastle awakened with a snort and a grumbled, "Whaddaya mean, snoring? I wasn't snoring!"

"Yeah, sure you weren't," McCormick answered, rolling his eyes heavenward. "C'mon, move over and let me sit down." The judge obligingly scooted over, and McCormick sank gratefully into the cool, smooth wooden seat, slouching down until he could lean his head against the curved pew back. He closed his eyes, forcing his muscles to relax in defiance of a tension that he could not seem to shed, even all these weeks back into the routine of his normal daily life – or what passed for normal daily life in these days of lectures, and studies, and research. With his eyes still closed, he remarked, "You know, Judge, you didn't have to come in here. You coulda waited out in the truck. It's too nice a day to be sitting back here in the dark like this."

"Yeah, well," Hardcastle replied, his own head leaned back and his eyes closed once more, "it'll be a while before I'll be inclined to sit in anything on four wheels for longer than a few minutes unless it's actually rolling. I think I've had enough of the other way to last me whatever's left of my lifetime."

McCormick stirred restlessly, sensing Hardcastle's steady gaze in his direction. He opened his eyes and glanced aside to see that the judge was now studying the Stations that hung at judicious intervals around the sanctuary, remarking as he did so, "This isn't so bad. I remember when I was a kid, I had a Catholic buddy who lived in town, and I used to spend the night with him some Saturday nights. The rule was, I always had to meet up with the rest of the family the next morning by the ten o'clock Sunday school time, but once in a while I'd go with my friend and his folks to the early eight o'clock Mass first." He chuckled softly. "I never told Mama about that part, though, she'd have had a fit, good Southern Baptist that she was. Me, I just figured you folks had a different way of worshiping, was all the difference between us."

The judge paused, his face thoughtful. "You know, they used the old Latin back then, which was pretty fascinating to a ten-year-old. I'd sit through the service, the homily and the blessing of the bread and wine and all, then slip out when everyone got up to go to communion. I never did get a handle on that transubstantiation stuff, but I figured eventually it would be up to God to decide who was right, the Baptists or the Catholics or the Methodists or the Presbyterians or whoever." He flicked a crooked grin across to his companion. "I guess I'm kinda hoping that it won't make any difference to Him who believes what, as long as we get all the basics right."

"Yeah," McCormick said, his eyes brooding as he studied the Virgin Mary. "Me too." He glanced back over toward Hardcastle, relaxed in the pew beside him. "Judge, I appreciate you letting me stop here." He laughed in embarrassment. "I know it seemed like it was out of the blue; I mean, it's not even like I've ever even been in this church before. But it's Sunday, and it was just so nice outside, and you've been feeling so good this week, and ... and ... well, it just seemed like something I needed to do."

"Don't worry about it, kid," Hardcastle replied, reaching out to the next pew and pulling himself to his feet with an effort. "It's not like we're in any kind of hurry."

"No, I suppose we aren't," McCormick said, rising and stepping out into the aisle, one wary eye on Hardcastle's progress. "And I can't tell you what a relief that is."

"What, not being in a hurry?" asked Hardcastle, a quizzical look on his face. "You been feeling particularly harried lately?"

"Well, yeah, what with mid terms and spring break and everything, but that's not what I meant." McCormick stood aside and let Hardcastle precede him into the vestibule. He paused at the font and dipped his fingers once more into the cool water, suddenly settling into a quiet stillness as the sparkling droplets spilled softly across his fingertips. Then he glanced up at Hardcastle, his face serious and rather sad. "It wasn't so long ago that I was thinking that there wasn't ever gonna be enough time, that we'd already used it all up in the Edsel ..." Even now, he balked at the thought, and he quickly looked back toward the font, his eyes dazzled by the reflections of the multicolored sunlight that came down from the rose window high above – and perhaps by something more.

He was brought back to the present by the irritable impatience in Hardcastle's voice. "Look, _enough_ already. We survived the Edsel, your head's back to being hard as ever, and as for the rest of it, well, I was _wrong_, okay?" McCormick looked up as Hardcastle assumed a tone of resigned repetition. "It's not like I didn't _warn_ you that doc was a little weird, all worst case scenario, and that's for the _treatable_ stuff, for sweet pity's sake. But no, you gotta go and take the first words out of his mouth right at face value, which is a heck of a note, considering that you wouldn't even _think_ about believing _me_."

"Well, when he said how very, very, very ..." McCormick paused, apparently to count up the 'very's' in his head, "... very, _very_ sorry he was, what was I _supposed_ to think, huh?" He shook his head in annoyance. "If that's the way he acts when it's something they can take care of with surgery and medication, what do you suppose he says when it's _really_ bad news?"

"Beats me. The main thing is, my gallbladder's gone, and everything else is on the mend, and maybe if I'd done something about it from the beginning, I wouldn't have had such a hard time getting over it all." Hardcastle studied the font thoughtfully and said, "You know, come to think of it, I _was_ kinda rough on him, snapping at him and everything, even though I still think he coulda done a better job of delivering the so-called bad news. Still, I imagine pancreatitis _can_ be pretty serious stuff, especially when the gallbladder's going bad at the same time. You toss in a bruised-up liver, and it can probably get a little hairy."

"Judge, it _was_ pretty serious stuff, and it _did_ get a little hairy. You were a lot closer to being right than _I _thought you were." McCormick was briefly conscious of an impulse to shake the old donkey, out of sheer exasperation – or perhaps just because he was actually still around to shake. "You almost _died_, remember?"

"Well, sure I remember, but it's not like it was the _doctor's_ fault." Hardcastle gave a sudden snort of amusement. "Poor guy. I'll never forget the look on his face when you passed out on us."

"_You_ might think it was funny, but I was pretty embarrassed, let me tell you. I must've looked like an idiot."

"No, you looked like a really sick kid who'd just had the wits scared clean out of him." Hardcastle smiled as he slapped McCormick's arm lightly. "C'mon, kiddo, let's wrap it up here and hit the road. Like you say, it's a beautiful day out there; it'd be a crime not to enjoy it, right?"

"Right." McCormick could not resist an answering smile, in automatic response to the enthusiasm that had become so evident once the judge's health had begun to improve. McCormick studied the water once more, the memories that seemed to be reflected in its sunlit sparkle, before turning abruptly and heading toward the doors. "Let's go, Judge. I'm getting hungry."

As they passed through the heavy wooden doors out into the bright sunshine, McCormick shielded his eyes with one hand as he gazed across the street. The Protestant church he had noticed earlier was just letting out, its members spilling into the street in a wave of laughing chatter. The men were dressed in sober blacks and grays, but the women were decked out in pastels as multicolored as the rose window, despite the fact that Easter, the traditional harbinger of spring attire, was still three weeks away.

Insensibly cheered by the sight, it was with a noticeably lighter countenance that he herded Hardcastle across the street to the truck, swinging himself into the driver's seat and unprecedentedly leaving the judge to fend for himself. After all, the judge really _was_ a lot better now, and they had no reason to believe he wouldn't be good as new in a couple weeks' time. So in marked contrast to his own behavior of the last five weeks, McCormick allowed the judge to climb into the passenger seat unaided, and even let him fasten his own seatbelt.

It was too much to expect that this odd occurrence would go unnoted, and McCormick wasn't the least bit surprised when Hardcastle flashed him a glance and said sardonically, "Bet that wasn't very easy for you, was it?"

McCormick replied without hesitation, "No, but I'll adjust. What's gonna be hard on _you_ is when I go back to school next week. And this time, Hardcase, you're gonna be _completely_ on your own. No more mad dashes from school to the estate at lunchtime to see that you're eating right, no more phone calls in the middle of the afternoon to make sure you're still ambulatory and in one piece. _And_," McCormick continued triumphantly as he glanced at the rearview mirror and swung the truck out into traffic, "you're gonna have to go back to driving your own truck and running your own errands. What about them apples?"

"And here I am spoiling you, getting you your very own riding mower with its very own Briggs and Stratton engine. Just for that, I'll do my _own_ mowing from here on in."

"Don't push your luck, Hardcase," McCormick replied in a warning tone. He shot a mock glare at his grinning passenger, who just turned to look out the window as he pulled on his cap, a black one with the grillwork of a Monte Carlo emblazoned on the front, a stylized numeral three and a distinctively aggressive signature decorating either side.

They cruised in contented silence for several minutes, with no set destination in mind, only a mutual desire to be free of the unusually stifling confines of Gulls' Way. Suddenly Hardcastle perked up and gestured to a restaurant just ahead. "Why don't we eat there? We haven't been there in a while."

It was Hardcastle's turn to glare, as McCormick smiled and serenely drove past the restaurant in question. "I don't know, Judge, I don't have a lot of good associations with that place, and I've had enough of bad associations for awhile. Besides, with my luck, we'd get Bernie as our waiter, and I don't know if any of us could stand that." He shot a mischievous grin at Hardcastle. "C'mon, let's live dangerously and eat Mexican or something. It's not like you have a gallbladder to protect, you know."

"Easy for you to say," Hardcastle said, gazing wistfully over his shoulder as his first choice rapidly receded into the distance. "Believe it or not, there really are better things in life than eating food that can turn your insides into Mount St. Helens." He sighed and turned once more to McCormick. "Look, just find us a good steakhouse, okay? I think I'm in the mood for a nice thick porterhouse."

"Hey, if you're in the mood for steak and you're the one who's buying, who am I to say no?" McCormick quickly found a likely looking establishment only a few blocks further down, and a few minutes later they were both comfortably ensconced in a well-equipped booth, ice water before them, and orders dispatched to the kitchen for two large steaks, medium rare, complete with Caesar salad, baked potatoes, and dessert.

"Boy, this is nice," McCormick commented as he finally began to sense his muscles easing their tension. "Good call, Judge."

"Why, thank you," Hardcastle responded with a twinkle in his eye. "Sometimes I do manage to make 'em. By the way, I know it's early to ask, but I was wondering what you had planned at the end of May."

"The end of May? Um, nothing, far as I know. I'll be out for the summer by then, won't I? I expect I'll be cutting the lower forty on _my_ new lawnmower, cleaning the pool – doing all the normal, McCormick-type stuff that needs doing around a rich old buzzard's oceanfront estate. Who knows, I might even find myself a part-time job with a law firm somewhere." He raised his eyebrows at Hardcastle. "You got something else in mind?"

"Well, yeah. It's Memorial Day that last weekend in May, see, and I thought I might take a trip, and I kinda thought you might want to come along. It'd be just me and you, though, so I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to." Hardcastle spoke in a rush, as though he were afraid McCormick might hold against him what had happened the _last_ time they had taken a trip together. "But I got these tickets in the mail yesterday morning, and I thought maybe I could share 'em with you. What do you think?"

"I think it's been mostly me and you for the last three years, and all things considered, I think I prefer it that way for a while – for guy stuff, anyway." McCormick leaned across the table, eyeing the judge curiously. "Just what kind of tickets are we talking about?"

"Wait a minute, I got 'em right here in my pocket." Slowly Hardcastle drew out an envelope, his actions reminding McCormick poignantly of the Daytona 500 tickets and their near-tragic aftermath. Hardcastle tossed the envelope across the table. "Here, you think you might be interested?"

McCormick cast another suspicious glance at Hardcastle before running a finger beneath the flap and peering into the envelope. A sense of disbelief came over him as he slid its contents onto the table, staring in reverent astonishment. The odd-looking logo on the tickets, a tire with wings, would have meant nothing to a layman, but any racing fanatic in the world would have instantly recognized the insignia of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

He brought his astonished gaze up to Hardcastle's expectant face. "The Indy 500? You're taking me to the _Indy 500_?"

"Well, sure," Hardcastle replied innocently. "Don't you want to go?"

"Want to _go_ – ? Hell, _yes_, I want to go!" His eyes lit up with excitement, McCormick couldn't seem to stop grinning. "Man, oh, man. I can't believe this. We're going to the _Indianapolis 500_!" His enthusiasm swiftly changed to apprehension, however, as he said anxiously, "But, Judge, that's a lot of money to shell out, coming right on top of what you spent on the Daytona deal, to say nothing of all the hospital bills. And are you sure you're gonna feel up to it?" Even the thought of accomplishing a lifelong ambition like seeing the Indy 500 in person wasn't quite enough to quell the worries about Hardcastle that even the judge's steady recovery had not yet dispelled, despite McCormick's earlier bravura performance in the truck.

"Relax, McCormick," Hardcastle answered, a hint of affection lurking beneath the impatience in his voice. "It's my money; I'll spend it how I want. And I keep telling you, I'll be _fine_. Good Lord, we're talking two _months_ from now."

"Yeah, we are, aren't we?" replied McCormick, the smile returning to both his face and his eyes. "And of course you'll be fine." Suddenly, he shook his head wildly, his curls dancing around his ears, trying to convince himself that this was real. "Wow. Oh, wow. Five years ago I thought I might _never_ see another race, and now I'm getting Daytona and Indy, both in the same year. Who knew? Whoever knew?"

As the judge sipped his water in elaborate unconcern, McCormick swiped the hair from his eyes and leaned back in his seat as the waitress brought their salads. "So tell me, Hardcase," he said, looking sideways at the judge as he speared a choice morsel of dressing-drenched lettuce, "what do you get from all this? You can't tell me that going to Indy has been a burning desire in you from Day One."

"Well, no," Hardcastle answered judiciously. "But that doesn't mean I never wanted to go just once; I think most people do. As for what I get out of it, well ..." He scowled in an effort to think. "Let's see. I get to sing 'Back Home Again in Indiana' along with Jim Nabors. I might get to meet Mario Andretti and Al Unser and A.J. Foyt up close and personal – I got contacts in Indianapolis too, ya know – and then, well ..." Suddenly his face was transformed by the pixie-like smile that made him look ten years younger and only appeared when he was genuinely amused. "Maybe I get to get my eardrums blasted out by thirty-three weird-looking cars going two hundred miles per hour, making left-hand turns for four solid hours – except when they start making right-hand turns into the wall or each other."

McCormick laughed, then continued eating his salad for a few minutes, surreptitiously surveying his friend as he did so. _Everything really is going to be okay_, he thought, as he watched the judge greet their tray-laden waitress with every evidence of anticipation, having already downed his salad in almost record time. They munched on in companionable silence, each man thinking his own thoughts, as they passed from salad to steak to dessert with nary a pause.

"You know what I'm looking forward to seeing at Indy, Judge?" asked McCormick musingly, glancing up from his dessert.

"No, what?" said Hardcastle, reaching over to snag a bite of McCormick's strawberry cheesecake.

"Hey, cut that out!" protested McCormick. "You've got your own dessert!"

"Yeah, but it's not cheesecake," Hardcastle replied in a mumble, as he chewed contentedly on his ill-gotten gains. He swallowed his morsel, took a swig of tea, and then asked ingenuously, "No, what?"

"Whaddaya mean, no what?" McCormick rather crankily responded, as he jealously guarded the last of his precious cheesecake.

"You asked me if I knew what you were looking forward to seeing at Indy, and I said, no, what? And now I'm sayin' 'no, what' again. Whatcha think? Third time's a charm, maybe?"

"Mmmphmphh," answered McCormick, gulping down his last bite of cheesecake. He took a sip of Coke, then said dreamily, "I want to see that strip of brick. You know, the part of the old brickyard that they've never paved over. Every racer who's ever won at Indy has crossed that strip of brick, along a whole bunch of the best open-wheel drivers in the world who never won the Indy 500 at all." His eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. "There's a lot of great racing gone on there, Judge. Heck, forget the bricks. I want to see Gasoline Alley. I want to see the museum. I want to see it _all_."

McCormick took one last swallow of his soft drink, then asked with deceptive casualness, "We gonna drive to Indiana, Judge?"

"_No!_" Hardcastle replied emphatically. "We're gonna fly. That way, if something goes wrong, we won't have to wait two days for it all to play out. We'll get it over with, all at one time."

"But we're going to rent a car when we get there, right?"

Hardcastle was pulling out his wallet for the check, and he glanced suspiciously at McCormick as he tossed a couple of bills onto the table for the tip. "Yeah, I suppose we'll have to, otherwise the cab fares will eat us alive. Why're you asking?"

McCormick assumed his patented hopeful-puppy-dog look. "Can I pick out our rental car, Judge? Can I? C'mon, Judge, let me pick out the rental car."

"_McCormick _..."

"Aw, c'mon, Judge, let me pick the car. You picked the race!"

Hardcastle in turn assumed his patented long-suffering look. "McCormick, look what happened last time I let you pick out the car."

"It wasn't the _Edsel's_ fault everything went wrong!"

"Maybe not, but if it'd been a Chevy or a Dodge, it wouldn't have ended up costing me a fortune. For God's sake, McCormick, they charged me rental the entire time we were waiting for the insurance adjusters to total it!"

"Well, that's not gonna happen this time." McCormick smiled winningly. "I promise, Judge, this time, no Edsels."

"And no Studebakers, and no Rolls Royces, and no Ferraris, and no Triumphs." Hardcastle stood up as the waitress returned with his change, then followed McCormick to the foyer, saying as he replaced his wallet, "Just a normal car, McCormick, something a little on the common side, like you and me would ride around in every day."

"Right, Judge. I got the perfect car in mind."

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Hardcastle stopped for a moment as he watched McCormick heading cheerfully for the exit, suddenly beset with a notion that perhaps he should have thought a little harder about what he was saying before he actually said it.

Then, shrugging, he snatched a toothpick from the dispenser at the counter in the lobby, only to feel the fragile wood snap in two between his fingers as he heard McCormick's voice drifting through the open doorway where he stood waiting, saying in happy anticipation, "You're gonna _love_ it, Judge, it's just like what we've been riding around in for years. We're gonna rent us a _DeLorean!_"

The End!


End file.
